As much as I enjoy preachy one dimensional films

"While the siege of Sarajevo was brutal..."

Also brutal for Bosnia's Muslim population were events that took place in Srebrenica, Bijeljina, Zvornik, Visegrad, Banja Luka, Foca, Prijedor, Kozarac, Zepa, Gorazde...(not to mention the Serb-run concentration camps of Omarska, Keraterm, Trnopolje...) - it's quite a long list. Basically, we're talking about any part of northern or eastern Bosnia that was "cleansed" of its non-Serb population.

Your portrayal of Bosnian Serbs as set-upon victims ("the Serbs were left almost entirely on their own") is not supported by Serbian leaders who have already talked openly about the financial & military assistance they provided for Bosnian Serb forces. Borisav Jovic, Serbia's representative on the Federal Presidency, described in a television interview the "fast one" he and Milosevic pulled in order to give Bosnian Serbs full access to the Yugoslavian Army - in 1992, one of the largest military machines in Europe (which is why the international arms embargo kept the Bosnian Serb military advantage locked in place). Serb nationalist Vojislav Seselj has also openly discussed the requests he received from Milosevic to send his militias into Bosnia; Seselj claims it was "my fighters" who ensured Bosnian Serb success early in the war. Jose Maria Mendiluce, one of the top officials for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, was traveling between Belgrade and Sarajevo when the attack on the Bosnian town of Zvornik began (led by Yugoslav army units and Arkan's Tigers); Mendiluce was in a position to witness artillery fire emanating from the Serbian side of the Drina River. "I even saw smoke coming from the cannons on the Serbian side," he noted.

But WELCOME TO SARAJEVO is chiefly about Sarajevo, which was surrounded by Serb artillery from April 1992 to September 1995 (a cease-fire went into effect in October 1995, but the siege wasn't officially declared "over" until February 29, 1996). And this encirclement forced Sarajevans to withstand not just a daily barrage of bullets, shells and mortars, but also life without electricity, water, medical care and adequate food supplies. For three-and-a-half years a 20th century European city was forced into a deadly, stone-age existence, and the international community did NOTHING to stop it. And people throughout the world couldn't understand why nothing was being done. There were endless theories, and one of them - as expressed by Woody Harrelson's character - felt it was because there was little concern in Europe and the West for the suffering of a predominantly Muslim population. And not surprisingly, people wondered what would have happened if the situation had been reversed - would Europe and the West have stood by & done nothing if Muslims had laid siege to a predominantly Christian city in Europe? We'll never know the answer, but it's a fair question.

What we DO know is that the siege was allowed to continue. And at the end of 1994, a stark obituary appeared on the pages of the NY Times, bordered in black. Signed by "over seventy members of the Western world's political and cultural elite" (as reported by Peter Maass in LOVE THY NEIGHBOR), the words were simple -


IN MEMORIUM

OUR COMMITMENTS,
PRINCIPLES, AND MORAL VALUES
DIED: BOSNIA, 1994
ON THE OCCASION OF THE 1,000TH DAY
OF THE SIEGE OF SARAJEVO.


PS: As for the depiction of the Serbs in WELCOME TO SARAJEVO as "cardboard villains," the only major character of the film who's Serbian is Mrs. Savic (the woman who runs the orphanage) - and she's clearly portrayed as a caring and compassionate individual.

MRS. SAVIC: Everyone must know we are dying. So - tell them. Keep on telling them, until they will move us.

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agreed. Hilarious quote from Harrelson, whoever wrote that should be shot.

Saw this when it was out for a couple weeks. West side Manhattan art movie
theater at the time. Packed at @5pm so fairly serious, like word of mouth, film people. Overall reaction was nothing special.
Me and lady friend didn't rave about it. More like just trying to get at what the heck kind of tone this sort of mess had. Guess we were looking for something else than what we got.
Only film by Winterbottom I've seen. Only mentioning about Welcone because I was checking up on his new one from Thompson book "The Killer Inside Me".
That one has a low rating here too. June 18 opening.
Thompson had some good books for filming like "The Getaway" and "The Grifters".
NY Times had a write up on Killer June 3.
My friend and I have a wide range of taste & latitude for films but this one
just left us cold at the time. Don't know how I'd feel today but rarely shown on TV or revival circuit.

what a big load of massive bullsh....
The Serbs firstly had all the arms from the Yugoslavian army. That's why they managed to occupy parts of Croatia for 4 years until the Croatian army freed their territories in 1995. The Croats didn't get much help from neither the West nor anyone else, in fact the world started to react properly when Bosnia was attacked. The Serbs did also get weapons from the Russians btw. And don't you forget who the attacker was in this war - not the Croats, not the Muslim, but solely the Serbs.

and how the f... do you call the Croats that defended their country from the Chetnik aggressor Ustashe? Typical national serbian bullcrap! You were the ONLY aggressors in this war, everyone else defended themselves. And no, Germany did not help Croatia with weapons. They acknowledged their independence like most other countries and the Serbs didnt like it. But of course you need to bring WW2 references because you have no valid arguments. You Chetniks should finally take responsibility for what you did.