Roko Markovina was a socialist member of the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War. A respected and widely loved public figure, he believed that, when war came, it was his moral duty to lead by example and remain in Mostar with his family, even as the city was torn apart by ethnic conflict. They were soon driven out by nationalists from their own ethnic community, who branded Roko a traitor and seized their home. Although the family eventually recovered the house, they never returned.

Roko’s anti-nationalist convictions and deep sense of justice led him to resist the political order taking shape around him and to vote against the Dayton Agreement. The decision made him both a symbolic figure of the Bosnian left and a pariah to the nationalist establishment. Remaining true to his principles cost him his country, his party, his city, and his home. Thirty years later, he remains resolute, living with his wife, Zina, in self-imposed exile on an island.

His choices also left a lasting fracture between him and his two sons. Damir, the film’s director, has built a career in theatre, film, and television; Dragan is a historian and political commentator whose work examines nationalism, memory politics, and the post-Yugoslav world.Although they visit their father regularly, they disagree with him on almost everything, particularly his unwavering belief in a united Bosnia and Herzegovina and his refusal to reconsider the decisions that shaped their lives.Bound together by a war that never truly ended, can they find a way to move forward?

Thirty-three years ago, I survived a war. It left a trauma that has shaped me ever since – caused as much by bombs as by the relentless demands of the newly formed societies to choose: identity, nation, flag, political allegiance.

I come from a deeply mixed family that believed in Yugoslav brotherhood and unity. For the young man I was, the collapse of that world was impossible to process. I buried the frustration and moved on. My family chose exile. I rarely returned; it no longer felt real. And yet, each time I opened the door of our house, the war was there again, waiting.

My father could never let it go. To face him was to relive the war at the kitchen table. My mother remained by his side, unable to change anything. His present is filled with images of life before April 1992, and with an endless re-examination of what he did – or allowed to happen. A continuous,quiet agony. Somewhere within those images of the past, there is also a part of me I have lost – something quieter, perhaps more whole. I want it back.

My father is now an old man. I have reached the age he was when the war began. Perhaps I can finally begin to understand him. I know this film may be our last chance to reconcile – and, perhaps, to live together at last.

TAMARA BABUN ZOVKO was born in Zagreb in 1985. She graduated in Film, Television and Theatre Production from the Academy of Dramatic Arts in 2009. After a decade of experience producing films, video projects, and theatre, she founded her own company, Wolfgang & Dolly LLC, in 2017. She has been actively involved in the European audiovisual sector, participating in the Eurimages Ad Hoc Working Group on Gender Equality in Strasbourg, consulting for the Romedia Foundation in Budapest, and contributing to legislative initiatives as a member of both the Managing Board and the Supervisory Board of the Croatian Producers’ Association. Babun Zovko is also a former member of the Executive Committee of the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF). She has taken part in numerous international training and development programmes, including Emerging Producers, Less Is More – Development Angles, Sources 2, Screen Leaders, Ex Oriente, the local EURODOC workshop, Sarajevo Talent Campus, IDFA Academy, BDC Discoveries, Producers on the Move, EAVE+, and is a graduate of the 2019 EAVE Producers Workshop. She is the creator or co-creator of several documentary series and is currently developing, producing, and directing projects across various stages of production.