De enclave

De Enclave is a Dutch TV series about the mass murders in Srebrenica during the Bosnia war. It tells a part of the Bosnia war, personalized in Ibro Hadzic, who lost all of his family there. It begins with the Yugoslavian tribunal in Holland (7 years after the war), when war criminal Darko Bokan is being prosecuted. Ibro Hadzic worked for Dutchbat during the fall of Srebrenica and saw his family being deported. Years later, during the Yugoslavian tribunal in Holland, he works as a translator. While working there, Ibro keeps reliving has awful past and eventually decides to kidnap Darko Bokan. In the last episode, former Minister of Defence Terhoef from Holland goes to visit Srebrenica twelve years after the horrible incidents. There, he discovers some horrifying things...

De Enclave can be seen as a little war history of Holland. It shows the awful mistakes Dutchbat, the UN and the minister of Defence made during the fall of Srebrenica. It's a history Holland would rather forget: it is shocking, unbelievable and I think a whole nation is ashamed about it. In Holland, the complete government decided to step back because of this history! In this series, you can see why they had to step back and you can see one of the biggest mistakes ever made by `Dutch military'. I can assure you, we're not proud of these facts.

Ramsey Nasr gives away a very good performance as Ibro Hadzic. You can really see his personal dramatic history is making him crazy and you can really sympathize with his character. Frank Lammers as Darko Bokan acts very well also. I was a little less satisfied with the acting performance from Johan Leysen as formal Minister of Defence George Terhoef. Though not bad, he didn't act as good as the other two main characters in the series. One of the most famous actresses from Holland, Rene Soutendijk, plays a little role in the third part as the wife of George Terhoef.

The biggest strength of this TV series is the realistic way history is brought to you at the screen. It's very frightening, as the real thing was, and it just tells you how it was there. No Hollywood, no patriotism, just the awful facts. When you look at it, you obviously begin wandering how many lives could be saved if the mandate was better, the UN brought air support or we simple went to Bosnia sooner.

This is the second movie about the UN mission during the Bosnia war. The first was the BBC TV film `Warriors' , which is an absolute masterpiece on my opinion. Warriors is about the English UN soldiers. If you want to know about the Dutch work there, take a look at De Enclave. Both movies are incredible accurate, precise and realistic. The negative side of the Enclave is that it's a Dutch production, which limits the production budget and possibilities. This makes it a little low budget series, but on the other hand, makes it very realistic.

Anyway, I think anyone who's interested in history should watch this, especially people in Holland. If I'd have to describe it in short:...Schindler´s List Part 2!

De Enclave is a prototype of a Dutch product, that over dramatizes the Dutch's own emotional discomfort, in this case with the Srebrenica affair.

About the acting: Ramsey Nasr plays Ibro Hadzic, an interpretor for the Hague War Tribunal. We seldomly hear him speak Serbocroatian though and if he does say a few words then they are clearly not authentic. His Dutch in the movie is also far too good for someone that has only lived in Holland for a few years, there is no Yugoslav accent whatsoever which is not realistic. Hadzic's emotions seem unreal and too 'acted' to me. For instance, when he detects a familiar face (I wont tell who) on a video he sees, he must know what later happened to this person. His reaction to that knowledge, however, is acted very poorly. The actor that plays Darko Bokan, Frank Lammers, does a much better job, as usual. One of the best actors in The Netherlands and always very good in handling foreign languages. The mistake that was made with him is that they let him speak with a Serbian accent despite him playing a Bosnian Serb. Bosnian Serbs, just like any other group in Bosnia, have Bosnian accents.

About the movie: The movie itself tries to portray how awful and nasty the situation for the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica was at that time, it partially succeeds by showing flashbacks & video footage that seem realistic. But because of the over dramatization in -mainly Nasr's- acting, the movie never started living up to my expectations. The Dutch role and responsibility are not exposed enough. The movie does try to show that more could/should have been done, and how incompetent many people are that are supposed to be protecting people in need, but this could have been accomplished much better had the actors, except from Lammers, delivered a better job.

To compare this movie to Schindler's List goes too far. 1) Schindler had courage, the Dutch didn't. 2) In the Bosnia war, there was not one single group that was exterminated by the other. In this movie we never get to hear what had been going on in Srebrenica for a long time. Understandable, since thats not the movie's purpose, but had that been more exposed, people wouldn't be making comparisons like these.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend the movie to anyone. Though on the other hand its truthful character makes it worthwhile watching for anyone that has no clue what "Srebrenica" is about.