28/03/2025 - Chiara Sambuchi follows a woman on an emotional journey to uncover answers about the titular tape that her father made while sheltered in Srebrenica during the Bosnian War

Chiara Sambuchi opens her newest film with old videotape footage and narration that unfolds like a storybook: Alisa Smajlović was a happy, playful eight-year-old girl living with her father Sejfo and mother Dana. But that was in 1991, in Srebrenica, Yugoslavia, just before the start of the Bosnian War – and her father was Bosnian, her mother Serbian. Alisa is now 39 and lives in Florida with an elementary-school-aged daughter, and she begins to tell us just what happened during those fateful wartime years in Sambuchi’s The Srebrenica Tape – From Dad, for Alisa. The film enjoyed its world premiere at the 44th edition of Movies That Matter in The Hague, Netherlands.

The film centres mainly on the titular central object: a four-hour videotape that her father made of his life while living in Srebrenica, which was eventually passed on to Alisa through friends; as the war broke out, her parents sent her to live with her grandparents in Ljubovija, Serbia. As history would know, Srebrenica became swollen with over 40,000 war refugees and eventually became the site of the first legally recognised genocide in Europe since World War II, where 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men were executed in 1995. In The Srebrenica Tape, we witness Alisa’s journey – sharply lensed by Paolo Pisacane – as she travels to Serbia to seek more answers about that tape, discovering long-lost friends of her father’s, documented through the lens of his video camera.

Viewers might immediately wonder why she never sought these answers previously, as she goes back to Serbia every summer with her daughter. However, it becomes clear that this is a larger, more emotionally draining undertaking than it seems. We learn that her parents divorced after she was sent to Ljubovija, and there were more complicated things that, as a child, she was never informed of. Her mother was one of many who escaped Srebrenica through the forest in a gruelling 17-day journey to safety as the UN peacekeeping forces failed to prevent the Republika Srpska Army from taking the city.

Much of the doc is narrated by Alisa herself, and the film also includes shots of her recording this voiceover in a studio, making much of the narration feel like it is being read back to us from a diary. This is sometimes tonally jarring, as clips from Alisa’s other interactions feel much more impromptu and spontaneous. The reunions with long-lost friends of Sejfo are immensely touching, although the film disposes of its more investigative side quite quickly, making Alisa’s journey feel slightly cut short. Sejfo’s fate is alluded to throughout, even though we only learn about it at the two-thirds mark after several conversations, accompanied by romantic, piano-driven music credited to Hannes Gill and Luca Ciut.

Although The Srebrenica Tape is naturally focused on the footage that Sejfo shot during the war, a stronger emotional connection could have been forged through more footage of Alisa when she was young, which Sambuchi introduces at the start. Nonetheless, it still feels like Alisa’s discoveries unfold in real time, intercut with news clips of the war and the footage itself from Sejfo’s tape, which feels like the true treasure of the film: a trove of personal and historical recollections from inside the enclave of Srebrenica. Sejfo speaks to his camera as if speaking directly to his daughter, showing pieces of her former hometown as well as parts of his personal life. With these elements together, Sambuchi unveils a touching personal investigation of some of the darkest years in contemporary regional history.

The Srebrenica Tape – From Dad, to Alisa is a German-Austrian production by DOCDAYS Productions in cooperation with BXS Schmölzer. Its international sales are managed by First Hand Films.