Pretty Village, Pretty Flame

A harrowing response to the Bosnian conflict, this war drama disarms preconceptions and prejudices by adopting a strategy of temporal dislocation. Cutting from 1980 to 1992 (the first day of the war) and to 1994 (a bloody hospital ward), and back again, it reveals its secrets with no little care. A Muslim and a Serb grow up and work together, but inevitably find themselves on opposite sides when a Serb unit is trapped inside a disused tunnel with no food or water. Boldly shot and edited, the film quite rightly puts you through the wringer.