Grbavica

In Sarajevo anyone will tell you exactly how to get to the small district known as Grbavica (grbavica means woman with a hump) and, if they lived through the war here, they will probably add that this was the site of the Serbo-Montenegrin military camp, where civilians were imprisoned and tortured. Ordinary life has now returned to this place of pain and suffering. It is home to lonely single mother Esma and her 12-year-old daughter Sara, who means everything to her. Esma has just managed to get a job as a waitress in a night club, and so she will be able to pay for the school outing Sara is so looking forward to. The girl’s comment that children of war victims, like Sara, will get a discount if they submit papers confirming their father’s death, gets no response from Esma. The outing approaches, Sara urges her mother to find the documents and, during a heated argument, her pubertal superiority drives her to ask her mother if she even knows who “knocked her up”. There is nothing for it but to reveal the long concealed truth.