cinematography
Emanuele Pasquet
editing
Desideria Rayner

music
Nedim Zlatar
sound
Mattia Biadene

with
Mirela Hodo
Kristaq Nina
Denis Nina
Mathias Nina

production
Kama Productions
co-production
MESS
producer
Riccardo Biadene
co-producer
Nihad Kreševljaković

Italian press office
Lionella Fiorillo
lionella.fiorillo@storyfinders.it

international press office
Lionella Fiorillo
lionella.fiorillo@storyfinders.it

At forty, Mirela, from Bosnia, lives in Rimini with her partner and two children, but longing to confront her unresolved past, she returns to Sarajevo, where she lived in the Dom Bjelave orphanage until she was ten. When the war broke out, she was evacuated in an aid convoy, and now she reunites with her childhood friends: Amela and Branko, an almost fraternal figure. They all rediscover the city, along with the modern facility that had once taken them in. Reluctant at first, and full of resentment towards her mother, Mirela feels an overwhelming, if undefined, sense of loss. Her journey turns into a search for her mother, and herself, which leads to a mountain village where she was born, in the Srpska Republic, to hunt down her birth certificate. In a mix of archive footage of Sarajevo under siege and personal memories, the film interweaves the personal and the history of an entire people.

2025 Dom
2020 Pierrot sui binari (short, doc)
2022 Samira (short)
2021 Le mani sulle nuvole (short)
2013 La stanza (short)
2012 Il duello (short)
2011 La panchina (short)

“What happens when you are ten years old and evacuated from an orphanage under siege during a humanitarian operation? Mirela has made a new life for herself in Italy, yet there are two gaping holes within her: her mother and her homeland, Bosnia. When I met Mirela, I sensed two souls in her: the mother she is today and the daughter scarred by being abandoned. Her survivor’s guilt – saved, while others stayed behind – makes this divide even deeper. Mirela’s journey back to Sarajevo is a symbolic journey in search of her roots and identity. The archive footage of the city under siege emerges in the form of dream fragments, images from her unconscious that help her to reconstruct her childhood and fill in the blanks of a fractured memory. This film tells a personal yet universal story of being uprooted and seeking to belong. Telling it alongside Mirela, I wish to stand by all those uprooted children looking for their roots.” (Massimiliano Battistella)

Massimiliano Battistella, born in Rome in 1985, followed up a degree in literary criticism with further studies in the humanities and visual arts. He got an early start in the audiovisual sector, gaining experience as a director’s assistant and in casting which gave him the opportunity to work with leading Italian and international filmmakers. He has written and directed short films that have made the rounds of major festivals and have been nominated for Academy awards, then distributed and sold in Europe, Asia, the United States and South America. More recently, he has made the short doc Pierrot sui binari, winner of several international awards.