Witnesses (2005)

90% of critics liked it
(10 reviews)
67% of users liked it
(641 ratings)

Three Croatian soldiers try to plant a bomb at the home of a Serb alleged to be a smuggler and black marketer. Startled to find him home -- he is supposed to be away -- they are forced to shoot him. Then, they discover a witness whom they capture and hide in a garage belonging to the mother of one… More Three Croatian soldiers try to plant a bomb at the home of a Serb alleged to be a smuggler and black marketer. Startled to find him home -- he is supposed to be away -- they are forced to shoot him. Then, they discover a witness whom they capture and hide in a garage belonging to the mother of one soldier. An honest cop and a female journalist launch separate investigations of the crimes. Then, a crippled soldier, the boyfriend of the journalist and the mother's elder son, returns home, and more secrets and lies spill out. The different viewpoints reveal the interconnections of nearly everyone in the small town, a microcosm for what happened in Croatia, where everyone, in a sense, bore witness to crimes committed during the war.

Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 30 min.
Directed By: Vinko Bresnan, Vinko Bresan
Genres: Art House & International, Drama

In Theaters: Oct 27, 2004 Wide
On DVD: Jan 1, 2005
Studio: Film Movement

Critic Reviews

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
Spanning a year beginning in the summer of 1984, The Witnesses offers the considerable satisfaction of a beautifully acted ensemble piece built on the foundation of a serious subject%u2014the dawn of the AIDS crisis%u2014handled just so.
Wesley Morris, Boston Globe
Witnesses takes us back to the turmoil in the Balkans. But the movie is not directly about the war. It's a cleverly told murder mystery.
Karl French, Financial Times
An engaging if somewhat inchoate drama set in the early years of Aids.
Tom Dawson, BBC
Bristling with emotional intensity, this is far superior to earlier AIDS-related dramas.
Ian Johnston, Total Film
A lively, timely flashback to the early days of AIDS with this character-driven drama.
Dave Calhoun, Time Out
The occasional voiceover from Béart and a slightly mournful score from Philippe Sarde offer some sense of lament, but mostly this unfolds in the moment and is urgent and engaging.
Tim Evans, Sky Movies
Techine never lapses into morbid sentimentality and it's interesting for a film to put the horror of AIDs in the 1980s in the perspective of a viewpoint 20-odd years on.
Patrick Peters, Empire Magazine
Téchiné captures the changing attitudes of the times but some characters feel too peripheral.
Marta Barber, Miami Herald
More than a thriller, the film is a portrait of the passions that drive ordinary people to kill and even worse, to accept the killing as something honorable.
John A. Nesbit, ToxicUniverse.com
Bresan captures the atmosphere of the Croatian war effectively and offers an insider's view about the complex situation.

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Featured Audience Ratings

Walter M

"Witnesses" is set in a Croatian town where Josko(Kresimir Mikic), Vojo(Marinko Prga) and Baric(Bojan Navojec) have gone to bury their fallen comrade in arms. While there, they go armed to a home and are surprised to find the occupant, a Serb, is home and accidentally kill… More
"Witnesses" is set in a Croatian town where Josko(Kresimir Mikic), Vojo(Marinko Prga) and Baric(Bojan Navojec) have gone to bury their fallen comrade in arms. While there, they go armed to a home and are surprised to find the occupant, a Serb, is home and accidentally kill him. At the house of Mirija(Mirjana Karanovic), the mother of the dead soldier, they debate about what to do with what it is in the garage and whether to let it go. Meanwhile, Barbir(Drazen Kuhn) is investigating the crime for the police while Lidija(Alma Prica), a reporter, discovers some inconsistencies in the evidence. "Witnesses" is an intriguing movie with much to say on the nature of identity in a war where the lines are not clearly drawn and nobody is left unscathed, not the soldiers or the ones left behind. At first the mystery is a compelling one but the movie gets tripped up by its own complex structure, following one character before rewinding and following another to slowly reveal the secrets layer by layer, that only makes events seem murkier than they really had to be.

Cast

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Witnesses (2005)

Critic Reviews

Featured Audience Ratings

Walter M

Cast