I’ve included links to a few books and to the main film I discuss in this post. There are some spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the film and would like to watch it first, you can find the link here :D
Danis Tanović’s film No Man’s Land (2001) challenges Western portrayals of the Balkans by revealing how media shapes war narratives. Rather than presenting the conflict as a simple struggle between good and evil, the film portrays war as morally complex and influenced by outside interests, particularly those of journalists and international organizations.
The Media’s Role: Simplifying Conflict
A key scene in No Man’s Land occurs when Čiki, a Bosniak soldier, holds Nino, a Serbian soldier, at gunpoint—only for the power dynamic to reverse shortly after. Tanović’s depiction aligns with Özkırımlı and Sofos’s argument that Western narratives often impose rigid binaries on the Balkans, casting the ethnicities as either the oppressed or the oppressor with little space for nuance (89). By showing how quickly roles can shift, the film challenges these imposed categories and foregrounds the complexities of the Bosnian war.
Journalists in the film aim to craft stories that fit clear-cut narratives of villain and victim. A similar detachment happens in Sōtēriou’s Farewell Anatolia, where the protagonist watches the city Smyrna burn while foreign powers remain indifferent (293–294). Together, these examples reveal how external forces often distort conflict narratives. Rather than supporting those within the region, they reshape stories to suit their own perspectives or agendas.
Western Representations of the Balkans
The media’s role in shaping conflict narratives has deep historical roots. Western artists have long constructed images of the Balkans that reflect external interpretations rather than the region’s realities. Much like the journalists in Tanović’s film, who produce oversimplified reports of the war.
Eugène Delacroix’s painting The Massacre at Chios (1824) illustrates this tendency. While it powerfully depicts the suffering of Greek civilians under Ottoman rule, it also reinforces Western portrayals of the Balkans as both violent and exotic. This reduction of the region to a place of generalized suffering ignores its internal diversity. No Man’s Land critiques a similar dynamic by showing how the journalist’s outsider perspective turns the experiences of Nino and Čiki into a spectacle. Just as historical art shaped Western views of the Balkans, modern media continues to influence perceptions in ways that can be narrow and misleading.
Another striking example is Antonio Brioschi’s (1885) stage design for “A Wedding in Bosnia,” which shows a mosque and a Catholic church standing side by side. I wasn’t able to find an image of the piece online, but the concept itself is powerful. For audiences in Western Europe (especially in the year 1885), seeing Islamic and Christian places of worship depicted together in one scene likely felt unexpected, even jarring. The painting presented Bosnia as a part of Europe that was still marked as “other,” a way of showing the so-called “Orient” within the continent’s borders. In a similar way, No Man’s Land explores this sense of in-betweenness, not through buildings, but through fractured identities, absurd political boundaries, and the personal toll of war.
Who Controls the Story?
The film’s final moments offer its sharpest critique of war narratives. As the camera pulls away, the soldier Cera lies alone on a landmine, his inevitable death unacknowledged. This ending is not just tragic; it symbolizes how the consequences of war, including destruction and casualties, are often erased from public memory. Cera’s fate reflects a pattern of silencing inconvenient truths that do not align with dominant versions of history.
The final scene with Cera reveals a deeper sense of betrayal. Colonel Soft, a figure entrusted by the UN, ensures that journalists do not report the full complexity of the situation. By controlling what is shared, he shapes how the conflict will be remembered. This reflects a broader pattern in Bosnia’s post-war governance, where international mediators (such as Christian Schmitt) risk reinforcing existing political divisions rather than resolving them. Bosnia’s three-presidency system, divided among Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks, institutionalizes ethnic separation. Many citizens fear that if one group gains too much power, the others will be sidelined. This system is built on the assumption that external mediators are necessary to help Bosnians find common ground. Yet, as the film illustrates, the very notion of common ground is fraught, shaped not only by what is said, but by what is deliberately left out and who gets to control the narrative.
Urban historian Dolores Hayden’s insight echoes in the trench where Cera lies; she notes that “place is one of the trickiest words in English. It carries resonances of homestead, location, and position in social hierarchy” (15). For the UN and the journalists, the trench is just another forgotten war zone. For Colonel Soft, it is a situation to be hidden. But for Čiki, Nino, and Cera, it is a place marked by betrayal.
No Man’s Land shows that war is shaped not only by those who fight but also by those who control its narrative. Whether through historical paintings, modern journalism, or international governance, the Balkans have often been defined by outsiders rather than those who live its realities. Tanović forces viewers to confront an uncomfortable truth: power lies not only in force but in storytelling.
Digital Dugme 