American Cinematographer - December 2001 - 24

A Media Circus and Kernels of Wisdom
Ciki (Branko
Djuric), a Serb,
peers cautiously
out of the
trench dug
between enemy
lines that he

begrudgingly
shares with

one

of his Bosnian

counterparts, a
soldier named
Nino (Rene

Bitorajac), in No
Man's Land.

Down in the Trenches

his home in Brussels. "We decided to

by Jean Oppenheimer

shoot in

framed

Eighty percent of No Mans Land
takes place in an 8-meter-wide by 15meter-long hole in the ground, and that's
precisely where the film was shot. The
open-air trench lies halfway between
enemy lines in what is supposed to be
Bosnia at the height of the Bosnian war.
(The film was actually shot in neighbor¬
ing Slovenia.) Trapped in the foxhole
together are two soldiers - a Serb and
a Bosnian
whose animosity and
-

mistrust of each other reflect the wider
hatred between ethnic and

religious
groups that has plagued the former
Yugoslavia for generations.
"The whole story is the conflict
between these two people," affirms
Belgian cinematographer Walther
Vanden Ende, speaking by phone from
22 December 2001

Super 35

one

so that when we
character we still had space

put the other character in; that way,
the audience can always see what's
to

happening in the background. You
always feel the danger, even when
things are going well."
Vanden Ende, who has earned
three consecutive

Belgian Academy

Awards (for Noces en Gallitee in 1987,
The Music Teacher in 1988 and Sailors
Don't Cry in

1989), attended film school in

Brussels. He worked

as a camera

assis¬

tant for many years

before making the
leap to director of photography in 1975
with the Belgian film Burned Bridge. His
credits include Toto le Herns, for which he
the 1991 European Cinematographer

won

of the Year Award, Farinelli[ 1995) and Le

HuitiemeJour[ 1997).
No Man's Land marks the feature

directorial debut of Bosnian documen¬

tary filmmaker Danis Tanovic, who also
wrote the

script and composed the

music. The movie

revolves around

soldiers Ciki, a Bosnian, and Nino, a

Serb, who are stranded in "no man's
land," halfway between Bosnia and
Serbian

military lines. A third soldier,

a

friend of Ciki's, lies on the floor of the
trench on top of a bomb that's rigged to

explode if he

A French sergeant
peace-keeping force, Sgt.
Marchand, learns of the men's plight
and tries to help, despite orders from his
superiors to not get involved. When a
British journalist finds out about the
rescue attempt, she and a phalanx of
other reporters race to the site, turning
moves.

with the U.N.

the event into

a

media circus.

Although the plot echoes Billy
Wilder's classic Ace in the Hole, Tanovic

rejects the label "black comedy," prefer-

MG/UA.

VDeeocjkauirnfcte,sy

byPhots



American Cinematographer - December 2001

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