Lara Milena Brose
Field of Work
Director
Country
Germany
Biography
After completing a degree in Philosophy and spending two years in Central America, Lara Milena Brose began studying Documentary Film Directing at the HFF. Her work focuses on people and their fates in harsh realities. She is a founding member of the AK49 collective.
Selected Filmography MIS NIÑOS DE MADERA, DE/MX, 2022, 25 min. (Co-directed with Kilian Armando Friedrich) ÜBERLEBEN, DE, 2021, 30 min.
Director’s Commentary
When I first came to Velika Kladuša, it was January. The air was bitterly cold, the shops were closed, the smell of burnt plastic hung in the streets. On television they talked about the cruelty of the Taliban. In Bosnia, dissidents of this regime were seen coming back from the Croatian border with trauma and injuries each night.
I had already filmed and photographed at many external borders in the past eight years. Northern Macedonia, Albania, Greece. But in Bosnia I intuitively felt a psychological complexity of the border situation, that I had never perceived before. I spent a lot of time in Elvir's Café, talking to the people. At first they had reservations, but at some point they opened up. I stayed for several months.
The encounter with Nahid, the poetry of her thoughts, being caught in an in-between state where there is no forward and no back, touched me deeply. The longer I stayed in Velika Kladuša, the more intensively. I came into contact with the people from the village. With Ferida above all. And Nahid's relationship with the village also developed over time.
When we took a walk together through the village cemetery one afternoon in autumn and Nahid suddenly felt reminded of her brother and another cemetery in faraway Herat, the idea for the film was born. For the time of the shoot, I lived very close to Nahid, partly in the camp on the border.
When I first came to Velika Kladuša, it was January. The air was bitterly cold, the shops were closed, the smell of burnt plastic hung in the streets. On television they talked about the cruelty of the Taliban. In Bosnia, dissidents of this regime were seen coming back from the Croatian border with trauma and injuries each night.
I had already filmed and photographed at many external borders in the past eight years. Northern Macedonia, Albania, Greece. But in Bosnia I intuitively felt a psychological complexity of the border situation, that I had never perceived before. I spent a lot of time in Elvir's Café, talking to the people. At first they had reservations, but at some point they opened up. I stayed for several months.
The encounter with Nahid, the poetry of her thoughts, being caught in an in-between state where there is no forward and no back, touched me deeply. The longer I stayed in Velika Kladuša, the more intensively. I came into contact with the people from the village. With Ferida above all. And Nahid's relationship with the village also developed over time.
When we took a walk together through the village cemetery one afternoon in autumn and Nahid suddenly felt reminded of her brother and another cemetery in faraway Herat, the idea for the film was born. For the time of the shoot, I lived very close to Nahid, partly in the camp on the border.
