Aine O’Brien (FOMACS) will host a Q&A with Juanita Wilson after the 18.15 screening on March 4th.

Wilson will also take part in a conversation about her work on March 16th.

With the Oscar-nominated short film The Door behind her, Irish writer-director Juanita Wilson (producer of Inside I’m Dancing and H3) delivers this haunting, affecting and visceral drama for her feature debut which recently won three IFTAs (Best Film, Best Director and Best Script). Taking place in 1992 as Bosnia is plunged into war, the story, adapted from Croatian Slavenka Drakulic’s 2001 novel, sees young Muslim teacher Samira (Natasha Petrovic from Shadows) move from Sarajevo to a remote village to replace the previous mysteriously-disappeared teacher. It isn’t long before soldiers turn up, killing the men and moving the women and children to an abandoned airfield. Here, Samira is subjected to a horrific series of rapes and beatings at the hands of the bored, drunken soldiers until she finds cold comfort in the bed of the troop’s captain (Fedja Štukan). An exploration into what we as humans are prepared to do to survive, Wilson’s patient direction perfectly mirrors Petrovic’s quiet and elegant performance. (Notes by Gavin Burke).