No Man`s Land (UK)

One of the best foreign language films of 2001, "No Man`s Land" tells the bizarre tale of two wounded soldiers, a Bosnian and a Serb, trapped in a trench between enemy lines during the 1993 Bosnian war. Neither the Bosnian Ciki (Branko Djuric) nor the Serbian Nino (Rene Bitorajac) trust one another. They bicker about blame, each accusing the other of starting the war, and grapple repeatedly at gunpoint. But the crux of this anti-war film rests on a third man, Cera (Filip Sovagovic), Ciki`s compatriot, who was shot. Under his seemingly lifeless body, a Serbian soldier has planted a spring-loaded American-made bomb known as a "bouncing mine," designed to explode three feet off the ground when the corpse is eventually retrieved by his comrades. So when the unwitting Cera revives, both Ciki and Nino realize that - if he moves - they will be killed along with him. A recent recruit, Nino has no idea how to defuse the bomb. Their only hope is to attract the attention of the United Nations humanitarian force which patrols the area. (The scene recalls "Catch 22.") But their predicament is also picked up by an aggressive, ambitious Global News Network reporter (Katrin Cartlidge) who monitors UN communications and is determined to snag interviews with the participants. Unlike the slick but less-effective "Behind Enemy Lines," imaginative Balkan writer/director Danis Tanovic delves deeper than the surface story-line, using the various soldiers` language barriers in communicating to reveal the inherent moral absurdity of the conflict, the bureaucratic ineptitude of the timid peace-makers, and the opportunism of the media.

"No Man`s Land" is tense, powerful, ironic film, finding prickly scraps of futile humor in the devastating horror of war.

I could not remember the name of this movie but a mere 24 hours after posting in the Software forum I was told the movie was "No Mans Land"
I managed to find it on DVD.co.uk and ordered it immediately.
This was the first "World Cinema/ Foreign language" DVD I had ever ordered and TBH I am extremely pleased I finally bought it.
This excellent movie showed why, IMHO, civil war is the most tragic and heart breaking of any type of conflict. The fact that the two main combatants in the trench knew people their enemy knew shows the complete and utter futility of any war and how in essence brother may be turned against brother. For me though this fine movie showed the complete and utter depravity of a "Civil War". Civil War now there is a real contradiction of terms.
Both combatants acknowledged that both sides had commited great atrocities yet both felt they were innocent of any crimes against humanity or genocide and believed that the enemy had staged the massacres for the news teams that were ever present in the Balkan conflict.
There are many extremely saddening parts in this movie yet there are a few darkly comic parts as well which made the movie even more powerful in its potrayal of a society that was collapsing around their very ears.

To finish I can only say that the closing scenes were the saddest scenes I have ever seen in any movie simply because the outcome was completely unexpected to me anyway. The final minute is heart breaking and brought a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes simply out of a feeling of complete and utter loneliness and helplessness.

Although the movie is just that, a movie, it shows the complete and utter failure of the U.N. at that sad moment in our worlds history. The sheer bueracratic nightmare that evolved when a simple French squaddie tried to intervene makes a complete and utter laughing stock of the U.N. and its many "Advisors" in the Balkans.

I may come back and edit this after I watch the movie again but to me this ranks alongside "All quiet etc" as a fine anti-war movie and would grace any collection.