Nafaka is a horrible movie. It was horrible when I was watching it for the first time, and it is still horrible, years after I've seen it for the first time. I wanted to add the comment (to start commenting on movies from Balkan region), but then I have seen good reviews and I was wandering maybe my first opinion was wrong, so as I am writing this, I am watching Nafaka DVD (yes I have it) in the same window. My opinion and memory was correct. It is still as horrible as the first time.
Film is trying to show the state Sarajevo was in during the war. It is trying too hard, using all available clichés we have seen in all the movies that tried too hard. From cheese love stories, to Bosnian-Mexican standoffs, to friends on two sides, PTSD affected soldiers, corrupt UN personnel, to whatever. I know some experts will state that human brain likes clichés because it is easy for it to follow the line, because we can recognize the pattern and get ready for where it is taking us. But sometimes you just overdo it and it makes you want to throw up.
While watching this movie for the second time, I was wandering who would give the money for this movie. The screen play could not read good and make movie this bad. Then I remembered, this movie was made by Jasmin Durakovic, who was the director of FTV, a public broadcasting corporation, main producer of the movie, which he wrote and directed. So there you have it. This movie was made thanks to conflict of interest and that explains a lot.
Out of 10 stars I cannot give it one, but I have to. Not even the great cast could save this movie. This, almost exactly the same cast was the pivotal point in the "Kod Amidze Idriza", voted to be one of ten best undistributed movies in the US by Indiewire for 2005, or in "Dobro Ustimani Mrtvaci" one of funniest movies I have seen it the last couple of years. This movie does not deliver at all. It basically fails on all points, of story, of directorship, everything. I actually had to turn it off, because it was too awful to watch again.
Every movie needs to fill the void in us. That is how great movies work. They find the common missing piece of a puzzle in all of us, and then fill it for those 120 minutes we spend watching. I was wandering which piece of puzzle that I am missing this movie was trying to fill and I have no idea.
