Connecting people through art 

Anri Sala

1395 Days Without Red

1395 Days Without Red was conceived, developed and filmed as a collaborative film project by Šejla Kamerić and Anri Sala. The project has given life to two separate films. Šejla Kamerić’s film is 65 minutes long, and Anri Sala’s film, made in collaboration with Liria Bégéja and composer Ari Benjamin Meyers, is 43 minutes long.

The siege of Sarajevo lasted 1,395 days. From 1992 to 1996, thousands of citizens had to cross streets threatened by snipers everyday: to go to work, to buy food, to visit a relative. The citizens wore dark colours, for fear of alerting the snipers watching from the hills above with their movements. In Sala’s film, an elegant young woman makes her way through an empty city. At every crossing she stops, looks and listens. Should she wait or should she run? Should she wait for the others or take the risk on her own? The city is Sarajevo, and the route the woman takes, became known as Sniper Alley during the siege of the city. The woman, played by Spanish actress Maribel Verdú, relives the experience of the trauma of the siege. It is her individual journey through the collective memory of the city.

Throughout the siege, the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra continued to play. In Sala’s film, the orchestra rehearses Tchaikovsky’s 6th symphony, the Pathétique. The musicians stop and start, repeating different sections of the symphony, just as the woman stops and starts in the city. Hearing the music in her head, she finds the courage to carry on.