(Berlin) The big guy next to me was hoping to collect Leonie’s claw. “Leonie! Leonie! he shouted relentlessly. A German in his mid-forties, who was a head taller than everyone else. We were in the “fan zone”, in front of the Berlinale Palast. Barely two or three dozen onlookers, on this cool early Sunday evening, but without rain.
I expected to find myself among hordes of admirers, far behind. I was in the front row. Bono and Adam Clayton of U2 were about to hit the red carpet. A matter of minutes. In Toronto or Cannes, autograph hunters, a voracious species, would have been on the lookout. Not in Berlin, where there were barely two or three fanatics willing to have their vinyls signed by War Or The Joshua Tree.
The guy by my side, indifferent to the passage of Belgian actress Cécile de France, co-starring with Leonie Benesch from the TV series Abyss, decided that he had had enough, having failed to attract the attention of the young German actress. He only had it for Leonie. I almost asked him, “As long as you waited, aren’t you staying for Bono?” ” I held back. The singer of U2 must interest him as much as his music has interested me for 30 years, that is to say zilch.
I immediately recognized the 60-year-old with auburn dye and rose-colored glasses in front of me, who was making a peace sign with his fingers.
I had listened to the song One walking towards the Berlinale Palast half an hour earlier, passing by pure chance in front of the famous Hansa studios, where U2 recorded in 1990 their album Achtung Baby a stone’s throw from Potsdamer Platz.
This famous song, inspired by the tensions in the group and the reunification of Germany, is said to be the centerpiece of Kiss the Future by American filmmaker Nenad Cicin-Sain, who presented his first documentary at the Berlinale on Sunday.
In 1997, in a vacant lot in Sarajevo that had been a makeshift cemetery a few days earlier, near the rubble where snipers had targeted the local population for 1,425 consecutive days, U2 gave an anthology concert. Bono Vox had however lost his voice. The audience took over, singing One in chorus.
An audience of all cultural, ethnic and religious origins, Bosnian Muslims and Jews, Serbian Orthodox, Croatian Catholics, who were able to gather in Sarajevo for the first time in more than four years of armed conflict. In a besieged city that saw some 14,000 citizens perish under the bullets.
Those who were there review these images with emotion, with tears in their eyes, in the film by Nenad Cicin-Sain. And one can only, as a spectator, be moved by this communion, by the unifying power of music, after so much mourning and suffering. “Fuck the past. Kiss the future! Bono chanted to the Sarajevo crowd. “When he said that, the war was finally over for me,” said one of the spectators.
Let there be no mistake. Whether Kiss the Future is also interested in an armed invasion, unlike Superpower by Sean Penn, also presented this weekend at the Berlinale, this is not a documentary glorifying an international superstar. Bono, who can be heavy in his messianic stance as a messenger of peace, has a more subdued supporting role in this film about the resistance of Sarajevo artists.
It is mainly about them. Cicin-Sain, who has Slovenian origins, wanted to tell the story of the unlikely meeting between the most important rock group of the time, U2, who composed the song Miss Sarajevo about a subversive beauty pageant where the contestants carried a banner with the phrase: “Don’t let them kill us” and the artists of the (literally) underground scene of Sarajevo.
While the snipers shot at everything that moved in the streets, punk-rock groups and theater groups put on shows in the basements of the besieged city, risking their lives. “It was a therapy for us”, says in the film the singer of a band whose drummer lost an arm (he hung a stick with electrical tape on it) and a technician, his life.
Nenad Cicin-Sain conducted interviews with Bosnian artists and journalists, American and British aid workers, as well as CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour, who was there 30 years ago. It recalls the motivations of the Serbian genocidaire Slobodan Milosevic in the siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of Srebrenica (8000 Bosnian Muslims executed by his army). Former US President Bill Clinton, whom many, including Amanpour, criticized for his inaction at the time, is also interviewed.
At the heart of the film, however, are the young artists and intellectuals who kept Sarajevo’s soul alive during those dark years. “We who survived the siege suffer from post-traumatic stress. This is why we generally refuse to talk about it, even with our children. It is very demanding. But it was worth it for this film, ”said Vesna Zaimovic, a journalist who participates in the documentary, at a press conference on Sunday.
PHOTO FABRIZIO BENSCH, REUTERS
Producer Matt Damon, musicians Adam Clayton and Bono and screenwriter Bill S. Carter at the premiere in Berlin
Cicin-Sain was inspired by the book by photographer and videographer Bill S. Carter, who scripted the documentary produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. It was Carter who first extended an invitation to U2 to perform in Sarajevo. He was also the one who convinced U2 to broadcast via satellite during the tour. Zoo TV interviews he conducted with beleaguered residents of his adopted hometown.
“We stopped doing it because we felt like we were taking advantage of the misery of the besieged,” says Bono. Hearing a Bosnian criticize Westerners for doing nothing for Sarajevo, one wonders if it hadn’t all become too dark for the concert tour.
We also say to ourselves, seeing the images of the famous Sarajevo concert – the images of which were previously unpublished – that Bono and his band have caught up well. It was, indeed, much more than a simple concert. The strong symbol of a fragile peace.