In August 1993, Bekir Hasanović trades a gold coin for a video camera, which he uses to document daily life in Srebrenica from that point onward. The footage he captures during the war, along with his makeshift crew, Dzon, Ben & Boys, presents an unexpected portrait of a disoriented population that holds on to reality with resilience and a healthy dose of humour.
Ado, Bekir’s son, uses these recordings and his father’s diaries to reconstruct his image. Together with his mother, Fatima, he seeks to understand how Bekir survived the Death March and the Srebrenica genocide

Dir. Ado Hasanović | 97min | 2024 | France, Italy

"Hasanović’s poignant documentary forges a dialogue not just with history, but also across generations.... In combining different perspectives – past and present, the violators and the violated – Hasanović’s film examines the psychological and the physical scars left by wartime atrocities" - Guardian

"More than an act of remembrance, this film is the indelible mark left by a young man finally seeking to break the taboo surrounding a long-buried episode in his father's life. This initiative allows him to reconstruct his image of his father and finally understand precisely how he managed to survive the abominable genocide of Srebrenica... so that he can finally turn the page" - Visions du Reel

"Bekir was one of the few men to survive the Srebrenica massacre. In My Father’s Diaries, Ado, along with his mother, Fatima, starts deciphering the tragic history of not only his family, but an entire people" - Berth Dochouse

"the glitching, sometimes distorted textures of 90s VHS tape.....brings a tangible visual interpretation of the ideas of memory that cannot be erased, and of that familiar idea ‘the fog of war’ – the fog, and the distress" - ScreenDaily

"We watch an amateur documentarian form himself amid the debris of a collapsing world. The camera becomes survival instrument, witness box, and shield against the unspeakable....an excavation of history through a personal lens" - Gazettely