Branko Šimić

KRASS Festival 2024: Ost

Koikoi

Concert

The piece TRAUM(A): SYNCHRONISING WARS examines the moment when global political conflicts meet an individual in all their brutality. Photographer Armin Smailović collected photographic material on the Ukrainian front. This resulted in his photo reportage “It’s about surviving every day”. Bosnian director Alen Šimić deals with his own war trauma through films and autofictional texts. His short film “B4” is a shocking testimony to the loss of his parents and his own wounds. The photo reportage and the film are the documentary and biographical material and the starting point for an intensive examination of war realities and traumas. Together with actor Drazen Pavlovic, director Branko Šimić develops lines of connection between the various media and stories and uses them to construct a media theatre composition that poses the following questions: Can war only be portrayed as a dream? Is escaping into fantasy the only possibility? How can the power of poetry make the incomprehensible bearable and give form to the unbearable?

Our tip: Srebrenica – »I counted my remaining life in seconds…«

A projekt by Branko Šimić and Armin Smailovic at Thalia Theater Hamburg.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1995: 8000 men are murdered over a 5 day period in Srebrenica, despite the city being within the UN ‘safe-zone’ at the time. Exactly 20 years later, photographer Armin Smailovic and director Branko Šimić, both from Bosnia and Herzegovina, are staging a search for evidence with their documentary theatre project, developing a minimalistic theatre composition around the tension of victim – perpetrator – spectator. ‘Srebrenica – ‘I counted my remaining life in seconds…’’ is based on the lives of three men: one is a survivor of the genocide and a chief witness at the Hague Tribunal, one is a Dutch UN soldier, who was stationed in the city in 1995 and one is soldier in the Bosnian Serb commando unit, who today lives under a completely new identity. Photographer Armin Smailovic tells their life stories through thousands of photographs, which form the aesthetic basis of the project. Smailovic has also conducted personal interviews and the transcripts of the testimonies at the Hague complete the collection of materials. Working with director Branko Šimić, he creates a project that exists between media coverage, personal fate and political meta-planes, which stages the worst war crimes in Europe since the Second World War and sheds light on their fatal consequences for the political world (dis)order of the last twenty years.

• Thu-11.04. / 20:00
• Fri-12.04. / 20:00
• Sun-21.04. / 19:00
• Duration: 90 Min. without break
• Infos about tickets here

Director: Branko Šimić: Set: Ute Radler, Dramaturgy: Susanne Meister, Visual documentation: Armin Smailovic, with: Vernesa Berbo, Jens Harzer , with music by: Damir Avdić and Vernesa Berbo