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In “Quo Vadis, Aida?,” Jasmila Žbanić’s swift and shattering movie about the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, a woman climbs onto a small structure and stares out over a barbed-wire fence into a sea of weary bodies and frightened faces. This is Aida (Jasna Đuričić), and she’s searching for some of her family members, but as the camera pans across the crowd, echoing her desperate gaze, the enormity of the tragedy at hand comes into focus.
It’s not the last time Aida will experience this elevated vantage, sometimes with a megaphone in hand as she translates instructions and information for her fellow refugees. She knows her words are worthless, a mix of vague reassurances and outright lies; she also knows that, under the circumstances, hearing the truth might be just as futile.