Danis Tanović

In No Man's Land (2001), soldiers in a trench keep arguing when danger ought to have settled their priorities. Tanović lets the exchange be funny, exhausting and frightening without pretending that an emergency makes people reasonable. We flinched at the sudden gunfire and explosions, which interrupted the comfortable distance the jokes had allowed us. It is a good war satire, and it gives us the clearest reason to value him: he makes the soldiers' suffering matter even while they behave absurdly.

That debut feature also exposes his weakness for making a point too plainly. He writes as well as directs, and the soldiers' exchanges are more persuasive than his treatment of the media and international intervention. Those passages arrange their targets too conveniently, with fewer surprises than the arguments between the soldiers. Some of the dialogue states what the danger has already made clear.

The later films vary the setting and the distance from war. Triage (2009) casts Colin Farrell as a war photographer confronting its aftermath, while Cirkus Columbia (2010) looks back to a small Herzegovina town before the Bosnian War. With An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker (2013), he turns to real participants re-enacting their own experience, working closer to documentary. Death in Sarajevo (2016) gathers an ensemble in a hotel, returning to a confined setting as a way of bringing divided people together.

Close-ups of hands and faces suit a film-maker whose best scenes depend on people responding to one another under pressure. His recurring collaborators include cinematographer Erol Zubčević and editor Francesca Calvelli, while his own credits on No Man's Land extend to the music. Yet the weapons make the stronger impression there, interrupting any temptation to enjoy the absurdity at a safe distance. That blunt use of sound is more effective than the film's blunter dialogue. Start with No Man's Land, and do not expect its officials to be as interesting as its soldiers.