| Screen International - May 1997 "A harrowing account of life and death in beseiged Sarajevo, The Perfect Circle opens the Director's Fortnight at Cannes this year with a bang. Director Ademir Kenovic and co-writer Bosnian poet Abdulah Sidran, who both lived through the siege, have made a dramatic testimonial to the physical stamina and moral courage of their countrymen that blends outstanding documentary and narrative qualities. The script centres on an alcoholic poet who, after sending his wife and daughter off to safety, finds himself saddled with two orphaned brothers aged seven and nine - the elder a deaf mute - who have escaped a massacre in their village and come to Sarajevo in search of an aunt. Movieland confrontations of gruff adults and innocent kids often veer dangerously close to sentimentality, but Kenovic avoids the pitfalls with great tact. Co-produced with France and with backing from Croatia and the Netherlands, The Perfect Circle puts Kenovic in the front rank of new eastern European film-makers." |
| Variety - 11 May 1997 "Sarajevo-born director Ademir Kenovic, whose first features, "A Little Bit of Soul" and "Man, God, the Monster" (AKA "MGM/Sarajevo"), were shown in the Directors Fortnight, returns to Cannes with "The Perfect Circle", a compassionately humanistic tale with some poetic touches about the relationship between a mature poet and two orphaned children during the Bosnian war. Hard on the edges, but soft at the center, this story of love, camaraderie and survival may have a theatrical shot in some international markets, including the U.S., due to its universal anti-war message and generous heart, and it will easily travel the global festival circuit." |
| 1997 Telluride Film Festival "Several new features set in war-ravaged Sarajevo will be released this year, but only one - PERFECT CIRCLE - is made by Bosnians about Bosnians, and it is surely the best. Moreover, through its very specificity and its homegrown authenticity, it is also the most universal. The story of two orphaned boys, who - together with a wounded dog - find shelter and solace in the home of a poet whose own family has fled abroad, Ademir Kenovic's film recalls such classic portraits of children in war as Rene Clement's FORDIDDEN GAMES and Andrei Tarkovsky's IVAN'S CHILDHOOD. Variety's Emmanuel Levy correctly noted echoes of KOLYA in the film's warm observation of the 'evolving bond between a mature artist and a young boy.' A war story certainly, filled with tragedy and brute horrors, but the main emotion one takes away from PERFECT CIRCLE is, simply, love." |
| Sight and Sound - November 1997 "Unwillingly saddled with war orphans, a feckless poet discovers a sense of responsibility and community that eluded his own previous family. The finest film to come out of the chaos of former Yugoslavia instantly takes a place among the best-ever movie reflections on war: filming under actual fire, Ademir Kenovic shows the human spirit triumphing over even the most crushing tragedy."
Hadani Ditmar writes in Sight and Sound about the fourth Sarajevo Film Festival: |
| The Independent - 14 November 1997 "This is Bosnian director Ademir Kenovic's account of life in Sarajevo during wartime. A feckless poet re-discovers his humanity while caring for a couple of runaway kids, after his family flee the besieged city. Perfect Circle, a humane and moving film, provides a welcome corrective to Michael Winterbottom's confused celebrity-fest Welcome to Sarajevo." |
| Time Out - 13 November 1997 "This is the Bosnian-Muslim take on the siege of Sarajevo. A quieter film than Welcome to Sarajevo (and a million miles from For Ever Mozart), it adopts a low-key, humanist perspective which might be termed 'old-fashioned', both in a pejorative and complimentary sense. A little like Kolya, it has an older man reluctantly adopting a couple of orphaned boys, one of them a deaf mute. There's a strong feeling of ordinary life in extraordinary circumstances (circumstances shared by the film-makers), which renders the occasional explosions of senseless horror all the more effective." |
| The Scotsman - August 1997 Ademir Kenovic has made a real war movie "To shoot a movie in Sarajevo during the siege might be considered irresponsible, especially when children are involved. Ademir Kenovic is not a man to let civil war interfere with creative endeavour. The fact that he was there at the time gives his film far greater relevance than possibly it deserves. Hamza (Mustafa Nadarevic) is a poet, who sends his wife and daughter away for their own protection. Soon afterwards he discovers two brothers, one of whom is a deaf mute, hiding in his flat. Their village had been razed and their family murdered. He looks after them until he can locate their surviving aunt and, in the process, learns to love them. The city is under constant attack from sniper fire and long-range bombardment. "Learn how to move around," the children are told. "Never be the third to cross the street." This sense of persistent danger is potent, as is the mood of despair and innovation. Ultimately, life in the ruined city is so harrowing, so real, that misgivings about plot accoutrement become increasingly irrelevant. Nadarevic, who volunteered to go into Sarajevo and make the film, brings to Hamza a sense of humanity's role in the survival of hope. The children, Almedin Lelata and Almir Podgorica, who had never been to a cinema in their lives, are a revelation." |