Mit Eléonore Arnaud, Elissa Alloula, Pauline Deshons, Pierre Duprat, Anna Fournier, Kevin Garnichat, Lazare Herson-Macarel, Timothée Lepeltier, Hélène Rencurel, Antonin Fadinard, Estelle Meyer, Morgane Nairaud, Loïc Riewer, Marie Sambourg
The siege of Sarajevo began in 1992, two months after the signature of the Maastricht Treaty, which turned the European Community into the European Union. This pact, this transformation and its consequences would affect absolutely everyone. A response to the decisions and indecisions of the European institutions, to a hist ory that most don’t know very well, Memories of Sarajevo is a historical epic which gives voice to the besieged.
Moreover, this piece formulates the reckless and shameful failure of the EU, how the war in former Yugoslavia is deeply intertwined with the founding of the EU but also how this conflict has its roots in the out-break and heritage of the First World War.
In that city lying at the bottom of a basin where the hills make for an ideal sniper perch, directors Julie Bertin and Jade Herbulot visited libraries and archives and listened to countless witness accounts, in order to try to answer this question: »How to embrace this piece of history that isn’t really ours by turning it into a story we could tell?« On the stage, the facade of a building, its inhabitants in the street below. Above them, European and international leaders meet, unable to find a solution to the crisis. The Parisbased company Le Birgit Ensemble is from this generation born in the European Union who feels that the anger and frustration caused by the Union’s tentativeness must be channeled to think up about new forms of political, but also artistic, organization. Memories of Sarajevo is the last part of the tetralogy Europe, mon Amour which was presented for the first time at prestigious Festival d’Avignon in 2017.
