The presentation of the book “Looking for Esmir” by writer and artist Nick Teunissen took place on July 10 via YouTube live broadcast from the Sarajevo War Theater SARTR with live coverage from the Srebrenica Memorial Center. The book tells about the martyrdom of the young man Esmir Mujičić in the genocide in Srebrenica, but also about the pre-war period in this city. More than 2,000 people followed the live broadcast on YouTube and the Facebook platform.
The photo of this young man in the whirlwind of war prompted the Dutch writer and artist Nick Teunissen to investigate first-hand what happened in this part of Bosnia and Herzegovina before and during the war.
“‘Looking for Esmir’ is a non-fictional story about the people of Srebrenica, before the lives of these people were turned into cold figures and metapolitical stories. In the book, I try to take the reader with me in search of a young man from Srebrenica named Esmir Mujičić.” says Teunissen.
Nick Teunissen was born in 1982 in Amsterdam. He was 13 “when the last hours of Srebrenica appeared on the Dutch news in the summer of 1995.”
“Although these were penetrating shots of a European city, it was hard to recognize for me as a child. But that changed one night more than 23 years later. My friend Serge Janssen sent me a photo of a boy smiling at the camera, in the middle of hell on earth . The face told me a completely different story. It was the opposite of the long-standing media footage. It turned out to be a photo of Esmir.”
“Together with many people from Srebrenica, we discovered a lifetime of untold stories, full of anecdotes and wonderful memories of a prosperous pre-war city, with springs in an enchanting mountain environment. First loves, music, theater – all that makes us human. The story begins with friendship behind barbed wire and ends with Esmir’s mother seeing her child’s face for the first time in a quarter of a century” – added Nick
During the special program, a panel of experts talked about the book, the award-winning actress Selma Alispahić played parts of the book together with the young actor Dino Hodžić. The famous Bosnian singer Armin Muzaferija made an impressive contribution with his musical program. The Srebrenica Memorial Center participated live in the program with a group of 50 students from all Balkan countries.
This program was realized in cooperation with the non-governmental organization Youth Power, the publishers Bloemberk and Dobra knjiga, the Center for Post-Conflict Research, the Srebrenica Memorial Center, the Sarajevo War Theater SARTR, the Produkcija agency, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Sarajevo, the Dayton Museum of Peace (Ohio), MasterPeace and the Platform Hero Foundation.