Refugee experience drives Bosnian drama "The Day We Left" at the Vancouver Short Film Festival
Facing adversity has fuelled Elma Begovic to create a work that hits close to home
Elma Begovic plays a Bosnian woman fleeing war in “The Day We Left”.
The Vancouver Short Film Festival streams online from January 28 to February 6
ELMA BEGOVIC HAS poured her own momentous stories into the brief but deeply affecting 12 minutes of “The Day We Left”, streaming at this year’s Vancouver Short Film Festival.
First, there’s the account of her family’s own tumultuous trip from war-torn Bosnia to German refugee camps and, finally, immigration to Canada. Then there’s the journey she took from being a Muslim girl in Edmonton who dreamed of acting to moving to Vancouver and L.A. and creating her own production company. And then there’s the life-changing recovery from a brain tumour that led directly to the making of “The Day We Left”.
Now the adversity Begovic has faced in her life and her career is fuelling a passion to create her own work and tell stories rooted in her own background. “It almost feels like a rebirth,” she says of this project, which she’s currently turning into a script for a feature-length film. “Having the rug pulled out from under you: that’s something I’m learning about in life. How do we keep a feeling of hope?”
Directed by Kaio Kathriner, who cowrote the locally shot “The Day We Left” with Begovic, the film is set in the 1990s. In it, a pregnant mother and her family are suddenly forced to flee their farm and hide in enemy Serb territory after the Bosnian civil war descends upon their village. Based on the story of the Hodžić family, whom Kathriner had met on his travels, it also echoes the experiences of the Begovics.
During the 1990s, she and her family were forced to flee the former Yugoslavia when the religious civil war erupted. Begovic recalls spending six of her most formative years in a refugee centre in Berlin. When the war ended in 1997, her family was sent back to Bosnia, where they lived as “displaced persons” before qualifying to immigrate to Edmonton.
As soon as Begovic learned English, she started taking acting classes as a teenager, which eventually led her to Vancouver and L.A.
“I’ve always wanted to be a storyteller since I was a little kid,” Begovic reflects. “I’ve always had agents and other people say, “You should tell your life story.’...But when I started out, it’s not like anybody tells you that you can write your own stuff and get short films off the ground.”
It took years for Begovic to realize that was possible. Growing up, she was raised to be proud of her heritage at home in Alberta. “My parents were always adamant about our culture and religion at home,” she says. “If you came home with me, you were getting Bosnian food and culture. My friends even learned a few words in our language. And then, when school’s out, I’m in Bosnia for the summer.”
But she faced challenges as a young actor. Arriving in L.A., she recalls agents telling her to play down her Muslim heritage, or sending her to audition for Latina roles.
“I grew up in post-9-11 North America where it was never cool, never acceptable to be who I am,” she explains. “Fast-forward to 2020, and the biggest thing I wanted to focus on was authentic stories and bringing attention to Muslim stories.
“Bosnia is always depicted through otherness in a Hollywood production, with an American director dipping their toes into our story,” she adds. “Also, with the Muslim experience, I think TV and media has portrayed it in a pretty monolithic way. We automatically think of Arabs and women covered up.”
Begovic’s chance to take control of the narrative came at one of the hardest points in her life. During the filming of the short film “Performance Anxiety” in Palm Springs in 2019, she was diagnosed with a brain tumour.
“I was feeling really unwell with really bad migraines. I fainted one day, then I lost most of the sensation on the left side of my body. On the shoot I couldn't lift anything with my left hand,” recounts Begovic, who adds it’s taken her two years to be able to talk openly about the ordeal. “Before that, I had started my own production company and was working myself into the ground. There’s this idea that in order to succeed, someone has to struggle a shit ton. My body was giving me all these messages. It’s definitely changed how I approach my work now: nothing is worth running myself ragged for anymore.”
Begovic was flown back for emergency surgery in Edmonton, warned by doctors that there was a serious risk of paralysis from the operation. Instead, Begovic has faced some hearing loss, severe balance problems, and other issues that she’s had to overcome for this, her first role onscreen since the medical emergency.
It was while she was recovering in hospital from surgery that Kathriner approached her about cowriting “The Day We Left”. As a Swiss-Canadian, he had been interested in the Hodžićs’ story, and the way it spoke to the way that where you come from dictates how you’re treated when you emigrate. But he wanted a Bosnian Muslim woman’s hand in the creation to bring the script authenticity.
That’s just what Begovic has contributed, not only spending long hours interviewing the Hodžićs (who now live in Australia) by Zoom, but talking to Bosnian relatives and drawing out stories from her parents about their own experiences.
“I had a lot of emotional talks with my family,” she says. “My mom disclosed things she'd never shared with me before.”
Begovic took extra steps to personalize her performance, bringing many of the belongings her parents were able to carry out of Bosnia to the set. She praises production designer Cayne McKenzie for re-creating an authentic-feeling Bosnian home, replete with lace curtains and traditional rugs. The Abbotsford setting also mirrors the hilly countryside of the Eastern Bosnian region where the story is set.
As the young mother-to-be Nura, Begovic even wears the floral headscarf that belonged to her grandmother, and delicate earrings that have been passed down through generations from her great-grandmother.
“That headscarf made it through the war and through Germany; it goes all the way back to Bosnia,” she says. “It really helped me as an actor. There’s something super-powerful and connected when you put on your grandmother’s things.”
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