Dnevnik Diane Budisavljevic

I was surprised by the high rating of this movie. The story certainly deserves attention and there are parts that were done well, but I expected much more. Especially since I'm originally from that area.

This is one of the stories that shouldn't be forgotten. The horrible terror of our human past.

This movie tells it all. It's all perfectly done. Nothing too much. Just enough.

First things first, my rating is about the movie and not about the historical event itself or the people that lived through it.

The movie is half screenplay and half documentary, while the latter is somewhat educational (real filmclips from that era where interesting to watch) the screenplay itself is monotonous and boring.

And elderly women beside me in the cinema started weeping at one point at the end where real footage of malnourished dying children was shown, hence i believe the movie should have been a 100% documentary and would have worked much better as such, the documentary parts left me with more questions that the movie doesnt answer.

As a screenplay, especially since it kind of tries to mimic older movies like "The Diary of Anne Frank" and "Schindlers List" with its filmnoir-ish look just didnt work for me, its not because of the cinematography and the blackandwhite-look which was okay but due to its static style of narration so i was happy that it was only 88mins in duration.

1/3 movie, 1/3 historical footage and 1/3 interviews, the movie part is boring, the historical footage interesting, the interviews are just sad because these now old people grew up without their parents.

Now here is why i have mixed feelings, the interesting part is not the story that the director tries to tell about her relative back than but rather the childhood-memories of those foster-kids, now old people.

The movie ends telling the viewer that the record cards from back than where confiscated and never found. After the movie was in theaters another historical researcher went to the croatian state archive and found them immediately. Now i cant even tell if those old people and their sad childhood story have just been taken advantage of for this movie project or not.

My rating of 3 stars therefore is only for the interviews of these old people and theire sad childhood-story since i cant rely on the credibility of the research done for the rest of the movie. :-(

Sad and real movie at the same time. The main actress did her acting good.