We would like to thank Marko Turk and Boštjan Videmšek.

Audience Award at the Fast Forward Festival (2025)

The starting point of the project is a photograph of a dead couple embracing on Vrbanja Bridge. In 1993, Admira Ismić, a Muslim woman, and Boško Brkić, an Orthodox Christian, attempted to flee besieged Sarajevo, but were shot by a sniper just before reaching safety. Two Americans, photographer Mark H. Milstein and journalist Kurt Schork, named them the Sarajevo Romeo and Juliet, turning the tragic death of two young people into a sensationalist story and transforming their bodies into an image of love struck down by war.

The photograph thus contains numerous unanswered questions—about how the public responds to such images and whether some stories, some lives, are considered more important than others. Beyond the specific image, a broader issue of war photography emerges: its purpose, intention, ethics, effectiveness, and its ability to shock. Suspended between the glorification of violence and the exposure of war’s horrors, it finds itself in a similar position to theatre—attempting to speak about what cannot truly be put into words.

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