Writer-director Jasmin Dizdar, whose comedy-drama refers at one point to the much-touted first half hour of Saving Private Ryan, could teach Steven Spielberg a thing or two about the use of dramatic irony. The large ensemble of characters in the story, which is set in London and Bosnia, includes a physician demoralized by arguments with his estranged wife, a Bosnian refugee he treats, a disaffected youth who transcends type in a battle against deliberately cartoonish parents, and a journalist who undergoes a crisis of faith that’s perversely convenient for his wife and his network. The characters’ paths sometimes intersect—without the archness of many such elaborate plots—as Dizdar inventively examines bigotry, combining daring humor and hyperbole, dark realism and shining idealism.
