Boško and Admira

The starting point of the project is a wartime photo of a dead couple, embraced, on the Vrbanja bridge. The muslim Admira and the orthodox Boško Brkič tried to escape the occupied Sarajevo in 1993, but were shot by an unknown sniper mere metres before the border. The author of the photo, the American photographer Mark H. Milstein and the journalist Kurt Schork named the couple “Romeo and Juliet of Sarajevo” and – despite the protests of both their families – turned the tragic death of two young people from opposing sides into a sensationalist story of a young couple in love, caught in the bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia.

When analysing the photo, the creators will question war photography and their own attitude to it. And war photography, torn between glorifying wartime violence and being an essential reminder of the horrors of war, is actually in a similar position than the production will find itself. What is an ethically responsible and reasonable position of an artist in relation to the documentary materials? What right do we have to use theatre space to talk about the pain of others that we ourselves cannot understand? Isn’t the question of sensitivity and ethics often simply an excuse for social inactivity? And above all: how do we avert the next war?