No Man's Land

In No Man’s Land, Danis Tanovic’s blunt, satiric yowl against everything ludicrous and harrowing about war, all battle comes down to the blackly absurd situation of mortal enemies trapped together in a trench. Stranded between lines with no will either to retreat or to cooperate, Ciki (Branko Djuric) and Nino (Rene Bitorajac), a Bosnian and a Serb, are ready to kill each other at any time. And what they don’t do may soon be accomplished by Cera (Filip Sovagovic), a wounded man lying nearby on a spring-loaded mine. Grudging attempts by a U.N. official (Simon Callow) to ”help” only make the situation worse; so does the self-involved interest of a war correspondent played with bite and ardor by Katrin Cartlidge.

This forceful Samuel Beckett-like drama is itself spring-loaded: It’s a merciless and mirthlessly funny antiwar weapon from a filmmaker who has seen battle firsthand and has lived to make art from memories of hell.