Tierra de Nadie (No man's land) [NTSC/Region 1 & 4 dvd. Import-Latin-America] (Spanish subtitles)

I rate it right up there with"All Quiet On The Western Front".The real futility of war mixed with the soup sandwich of the Balkans.You Must See This Movie!!!

I recently had the distinct pleasure of viewing this movie.It's premise begins with two soldiers from opposing sides beingtrapped in a trench between two armies fighting a civil war. Scene after scene of sidesplitting antics follow in rapid succession. Initially only one of the men is armed. He points his rifle at the other and demands to know which side started the war. Being intimidated by the muzzle at his head, our trembling gladiator replies "we did". During a moment of carelessness theweapon changes hands, and again the question of who started thewar comes up, and so on. Another scene shows a soldier in another trench reading amagazine and being horrified by the war in Rwanda, as if his cir-cumstances were better. His expression alone was worth the priceof admission. In addition there is a third soldier in the trench. He was believed to be dead. While unconcious his body is placed on aland mine and now he is unable to move without detonating it. Heis a comrade of one of the other two, who shows a great deal of compassion to his friend's plight by giving him water and scratching him when he itches. The feelings of pity quickly evap-orate when our immobile friend states he has to go to the bath-room. If things weren't zany enough, soon a French member of the UNpeacekeeping forces becomes involved in what has become an uneasytruce. He hopes to deactivate the mine but has neither the equip-ment or knowhow, and spends most of his screen presence trying tofind someone who speaks French or English. The chaos of so many different nationalties trying to communicate is a movie in its own right. Soon the UN high command dispatches a mine technician to aidthe now weary French unit. He of course is a German. The merriment continues unabated as several media types scurry to the unfolding events and bring even more craziness to what hasbecome a three ring circus. My only problem with the movie is the down turn it takes atthe end, but I won't give anymore of the plot away. All in allthough, the experience was certainly worthwhile!

Here we have Catch-22 updated replacing the island of Pianosa and WWII with a trench in No-man's Land between the Bosnian and Serb front lines in the Bosnian War. Tanovic's rendering of an intricate story-line is powerful and told with biting, subtle, and satirical black humor. Tanovic comes across as an insider and a witness (which no doubt he was) to the pointless atrocities and dirty warfare that the real world break-up of Yugoslavia and successive Serbian wars created.Some of the films funnier moments prove Tanovic's insight into the UN, world media, and the pointlessness of the war. When a German Explosive Ordnance Expert is to show up, the French UN members wonder where he is. They watch the clock, say he is supposed to show at 3:30 and sure enough when the clock rolls to the half hour, the German promptly drives up. Both the Bosnian and Serbian Field commanders put in calls to UNPROFOR to resolve a situation when two half-naked people parade around No Man's Land waving white flags.The plot line basics have been well-covered by other reviewers, so I will move to my observations. The reason this movie garners such well-deserved praise is that it very artfully and entertainingly drives home a powerful message and agenda that has topical implications to ongoing world events. It questions the function of the United Nations engagement in simply a "sidelines" non-interventionist humanitarian role when atrocities of war are ongoing. It reinforces the wastefulness of war. It highlights the international media's crucial but sometimes manipulative role in modern war coverage. But most of all, it tells a story we care about...a story that matters.And as we are asked these days to draw lines in the sand, the French Sergeant Marshand words ring true, "You can't be neutral facing murder. Doing nothing to stop it is taking sides." Though as politically charged as that statement is and this movie implies, the movie never preaches. The message is in the art and as bitingly sharp as Joseph Heller's Catch-22 was in its day. This is a great and relevant war movie for these times and all times.

Classic satire about UN and EU bureaucracy and the way their bureaucratic red tape is actually detrimental to human life and safety in the middle of war. Statistics and PR matter more than human life.

Worth seeing, no doubt. However, makes you wonder what a true genius like Akira Kurosawa would have done with such an original premise.This director here misses having a masterpiece of a film on his hands by something like a hair.Had the three main characters been better developed the audiance would have had more reason togive a damn what happens to them. Alas, it didn't happen, although the script is pretty damn decent & works for the most part.I have said the following so often in the past: give the audiance something/someone to care about--because if they don't kow much about the people in your film they will not be moved by what happens to them. Just the way it is.Having said all that, I still maintain it is worth seeing. Branko Djuric is very good here.Check it out. I wish I could have given it five stars.

This is a fantastic movie on so many levels.I like the idea - three men, enemies, trapped in No Man's Land, needing to work out a compromise in order to stay alive while they try and work out a solution to their dilemma. As the movie progresses we sense they could be friends if it weren't for circumstances. They find coincidental connections between their lives that seem to make nonsense of the different sides they find themselves on.The languages are mainly Serbo-Croat with subtitles, as well as English or French when spoken by UN soldiers, journalists etc., Far from making the movie hard to follow, this touch adds real dynamism and realism to the plot, emphasizing the Tower-of-Babel like feel the many different interested parties, military task forces, militias, journalists and armies bring to the story.****** SPOILER ALERT ******They argue, almost to pass the time, and through their arguments we get some sense of what drove the war, and how each side believes its own propaganda (though I felt the director to be subtly on the side of the Bosnians).We also see the uselessness of the UN, we start to wonder what the Smurfs (Blue Helmets) are there for at all as they seem to do all they can to avoid solving the problem if it clashes with their security or comfort. Some of them are 'professional' soldiers in the truest sense of the word, there for the career and money alone and not going to dirty their hands on actual work. Yet there are other UN soldiers, especially at lower ranks, who are motivated by idealism and the idea that their presence there ought to mean something. They are hampered by the career soldiers up the ranks. I suppose this gives us the directors nutshell view of the UN in Bosnia, probably accurate enough. I love the bit where the plummy-voiced British Col.Soft tells his aide-de-camp with a sigh "I need a helicopter" (he's going to have to get off his derriere and do some work outdoors) " - and a map, of Bosnia" (because he has never set foot outside the office and has no idea either literally or metaphorically, of the country). The director uses many subtle scenes like this to convey different perspectives of the war. Equally subtle was the scene with Serbian soldiers listening to the news about Rwanda on the radio and saying 'Oh, what's happening in Rwanda, it's messed up!' (but not noticing the mess under their own noses).Then we see some other causes of the war - arms manufacturers: the bouncing mine placed under one of the men so he can't move is 'maad en the A OO" (made in the EU) as the Serbian soldier says as he reads it off the side of the mine while placing it. So here's the EU, sending its soldiers to police a war that would be that bit harder to fight in the first place were it not also selling armaments to the combatants. I don't know the accuracy of this scene in the movie (I thought most of the Serbian weapons anyway were from the JPLN - Yugoslav army - from Soviet days) but it's thought-provoking on a macro level.The media comes in for a slating as well. It is a real circus, a whole convoy of vans sprouting satellite dishes arriving up when they smell a story. When the man trapped on a mine sees them drive off in the same swirl of dust at the end of the day, he knows he is literally doomed. The media have lost interest in him, off to the next story, he must be a dead man already. He pulls out a photo of his girlfriend - the only real thing that matters now that he knows he'll never see her again. Equally ambivalent is the hard-bitten journalist who won't take no for an answer and forces the UN to intervene. At first we think her an idealist trying to make a real difference through her job, but by the end we come to see her as yet another career soldier (ok, journalist) trying to make her name off the back of other people's misfortune, she, the saving guardian angel as long as they are of some use to her. Painfully accurate probably... Ironically, at the end her cameraman asks her if she'd like to get a few more shots of the trench, and she says 'no, a trench is a trench' and thus misses the biggest part of the story - that the man, supposedly rescued, is still on the mine.Yet by the end of the movie what actually drives the two men, one Bosnian, one Serb, to pathological hatred and killing each other is something quite petty: not flag or country or ideals but the personal dislike one might encounter between two brawlers in a pub.Growing up in Ireland, I've had to endure many cheesy, nauseating dramas about The Troubles in northern Ireland, and No Man's Land could easily have fallen into the same trap, but it doesn't. The director manages to give so many angles and insights into the Balkans conflict and the various actors involved through the story of these three men trapped in a trench. I've watched this movie many times with soldiers who served in EUFOR in Bosnia and they nearly always agreed it was a reasonably fair portrayal of many aspects of that war. They could certainly relate to many of the personalities & events portrayed.

The film was recommended by a scholar of the Balkans. Set in the Bosnian war, with UNPROFOR sent with a very limited mission, and generally considered (and shown) as being incompetent. A Serb soldier and a Bosniak soldier are trapped in the same trench in no man's land, with a third soldier lying injured on top of a mine. The UN (with Simon Callow as the highest-ranking British officer - hilarious !) decide to intervene.

Bought on the recommedation of an Estonian friend after a night disussing films. This and the equally fun 'Black Cat, White Cat' are in a class of thier own. Unique and original comedy and the characters have the right touch of just believable enough to exist. Subtitles were a little difficult to read for me as I am partially sighted. Well worth watching if you can pick the DVD up cheaply and like to look at life through a different lens. .

A comical, entertaining but ultimately tragic story. Also the ending is better understood having read Peacekeeper;Long Road to Sarejevo by General MacKenzie whereby he explains how ineffectual and nonsensical commands from the UNHO could be.

Wonderful, cynical examination of the was in Bosnia, and inability of the UN to achieve anything. The acting is first-class. THis film should be much better known; I think it's a classic.