Un pont sur la drina

The book (1945) by Nobel Prize laureate Ivo Andric describes the age-long, conflict-ridden history of the region around the bridge near the Bosnian city of Visegrad. This documentary quotes from the book, which says the following about the bridge and the inhabitants of Visegrad: "The two are so intertwined that they (...) could not be told as two separate stories." As an addendum to the book, this short documentary combines images of the bridge and the Yugoslavia Tribunal testimony of Poljo Mevsud, an inhabitant of Vlahovici, 15 kilometres from Visegrad. On 17 and 18 September 2001, he told the tribunal how he retrieved bodies from the river during the war in Bosnia, in hopes of identifying them. The questions asked at the tribunal search for facts about the bodies: the percentage of men versus women, their state when found, traces of torture or rape. Mevsud's voice sounds calm and precise; the man himself remains invisible. We only see the bridge, in a fixed, immovable frame. The odd bird, fish or pedestrian passes by; the light changes with the time of day and the water flows as it always has.