Jessica Kiang of VARIETY wrote:
(...) a perilous balance director Jasmila Žbanić achieves strikingly well in her deeply compelling, harrowing and heartbreaking “Quo Vadis, Aida?,” which reminds us that each of those 8,372 deaths is an individual, exponential multiplication of horror, “ wrote Jessica Kiang on Jasmila Žbanić’s sensitively fictionalized version of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and Venice Lion contender QUO VADIS, AÏDA?
There are ongoing debates around the aestheticization of atrocity ( ), Zbanic avoids this trap by making a far more straightforward and unadorned film, unobtrusively but intelligently photographed by DP Christine A. Maier, yet still creating palpably intensifying drama, aided by the thriller rhythms of Jaroslaw Kominski’s editing.
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Deborah Young, of The Hollywood Reporter wrote:
Zbanic’s fictionalized screenplay sucks the viewer into the nightmare of Srebrenica
Zbanic’s expert telling is simple and to the point, relying on the audience’s empathy with the anguished interpreter to reach the heart of darkness in this tragic story. It may be the definitive account of Srebrenica on film, and it opened Venice competition (it is also playing in Toronto) on a somber high note.
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Lee Marshall of SCREEN DAILY wrote:
This is the first of Sarajevo-born director Zbanic’s films in ten years to directly address the war, and her first ever to be set (apart from a moving final coda) during the years of the conflict. Both Zbanic’s 2006 debut, Berlin Golden Bear winner Grbavica, and the follow-up, On the Path (2010) were about the its lasting traumas in present-day Bosnia ( )
The energy and passion of Zbanic’s fresh, new, direct gaze at the conflict comes through in every fram
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