I was moved by the film also, and I think the moment of ultimate tragedy is the beautiful young Muslim girl's death/murder, and the moment of truth is when Muslim Vlado confronts Christian Serb Slavko with that. They part as the friends they once were, and then Vlado waits through the night and kills Slavko the next morning.The film is intense and makes anyone who sees it search their soul.However, as other reviewers have said, the Serbs are unfairly painted as the villains in this. As we are seeing right now in the Ukraine, the legal government had been overthrown, and ethnic groups were taking up arms to secede from Yugoslavia, and the Serbs were trying to prevent that and future conflicts which would result.Note that this Serb-demonizing film came out right before our Kosovo war, which we - the West - wrongfully forced on the Serbs with the initially secret Appendix B of the Rambouillet Treaty which demanded unconditional NATO occupation of all Yugoslavia, including Serbia, an unconditional surrender ultimatum we well knew the Serbs would never accept, which was our pretext to start bombing them. (I whistle-blew App. B on H-Diplo on 14May99, and Henry Kissinger did so unspecifically in his 31May99 Newsweek New World Disorder article.)So as good as the film is, I think it has hurt rather than helped our understanding of the Yugoslavian tragedies.Other excellent films about the Balkan tragedies are Before the Rain (1994) and - as others have noted - Savior (1998).

There was a civil war in the US 150 years ago,no one truly remembers it.There is the terror of sniper combat so well displayed in the film"Enemy at the gates"that was reviewed on my blog,but it was uniformed soldiers.We begin to understand sectarian violence from Iraq and Afghanistan BUT in a white European country,in our own lifetime,before 9/11 changed our focus on everything?No I doubt anyone truly understood it or does to this day,but since WW11 the first war crimes trials were held because of it. The country of Yugoslavia,was a patch work of forced uniting of diverse Balkan peoples of different ethic and religious backgrounds that fell apart when the strongman holding it together,Marshal Tito,died. Its capital city was Sarajevo,home to a Winter Olympics Game in the recent past,and a shinning example to the world that a different sort of new kind of capitalism/socialism,much like what China IS succeeding with today,could work in Europe. Tito's death changed everything to again remind us all that old hate and grudges lie just below the surface and rise like puss from a wound and fester to infect and kill us all. This film doesn't shed much new light how that came to pass in what was Yugoslavia,but it does focus a narrow light on what people living a very similar life as we in the US live,can fall into when "wounds"are not treated and how fragile our life styles really can be. In a sense this is very personnel human horror story without zombies.HBO films made another film worthy of all our attention to understand what modern war in cities and sectarian violence can be right here if we are not smart and allow ourselves to let the mess our country is in continue.The families and people in this film are like us.Middle class,educated and see their lifes decent into a living and in many cases dying hell. Congress and the President should see this picture ,as a teachable moment,before they forget how fractured our own country has truly become.Like most docudramas the story is a copulation of many events to give a picture of a event that is not rational but that did happen.

You guys are missing the point, honestly, UNIFORMS, incorrect use of a mosin M-44? Who cares, it's the message that counts. Maybe I have to apologize for having a life outside of looking up little discrepancies in movies, but I try to take the movie for what it's worth rather than pick it apart. It was an HBO movie, yes, it's going to be in English! Get used to it, most movies are written in the language of the intended country of release. It's a message that goes back to the US civil war but brought up into modern times. It was a well made movie with good acting and an exciting screenplay. I was thuroughly entertained while at the same time being forced to know that the back-story was taken directly out of real life. Great movie (period)

I don't get why people have a problem with the realism of the movie. I have many relatives in Sarajevo and they lived through this nightmare. Snipers didn't distinguish men, women or children. All were killed alike.People were killed while running for water and food. Kids playing in their yards were shot off the swing sets etc. Also some of the other things in the movie were that the Serbs took the residence of one lady living in the mountains outside of Sarajevo and gave the house to slavko right after soldiers are raping the daughter of the present resident of the house. This also has happened. The movie has a solid story. I don't know, maybe I am saying this because I can personally relate to this movie. Maybe if it played in another civil conflict, more audiences would be more open to it.