All's Fair in Love and War: Orientalism and Cinematic Depictions of the Bosnian and Croatian Wars

Since the 1990s, movie-makers within and outside of the Balkans have wrestled with how to depict the Bosnian and Croatian Wars in film. In western Europe and North America, filmmakers have utilized culturally-entrenched Orientalist tropes to make sense of the conflicts. Through the analysis of western and Balkan-produced war films, this project intends to explore how Orientalism influences the aesthetic choices made within Bosnian and Croatian War movies, why these tropes may persist, unremarked upon, in popular cinema, and how Orientalist stereotypes may be appropriated by Orientalized peoples to solidify nascent ethno-national identities and justify ethno-nationalist conflict.