GO WEST at the Sarajevo Film Festival
August 22nd, 2005 by Andre Soares
This past Saturday, Ahmed Imamovic’s Go West, the controversial tale of a gay love affair between a Muslim and a Serb set against the carnage of the Bosnian war, was shown in public for the first time at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
Anti-gay Muslim and Serbian leaders chastised Imamovic and co-screenwriter Enver Puska for, in the words of a Muslim publicist, "identifying the Bosnian tragedy and 250,000 dead with the story about two gays,*", but the audience at the Sarajevo festival thought differently. At the open-air screening, approximately 2,500 people gave the film a long standing ovation.
Go West will have its international premiere in Montreal later this month.
*That’s akin to saying that the love affair between Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara, set against the American Civil War, somehow diminishes the horrors of that conflict. Or that the one between Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca dishonors the millions of World War II dead.
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Bigotry is a Balkan Family Value, apparently.
Congratulations to Ahmed Imamovic for having the courage to make Go West.