My dad’s video tape connected me to his lost life

Alisa Smajlović was a small child living with her parents in Srebrenica, then part of the former Yugoslavia, when the Bosnian war began in 1992.

As fighting moved closer to their hometown, it was decided she would leave Srebrenica to live with her grandparents just 16 kilometres away, across the border in Lubrovija Serbia. For the next three years, her parents remained trapped in the war zone, their only contact with Alisa occasional letters delivered by the Red Cross.

In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica, murdering more than 8,000 Muslim men and attempting to hide evidence of the mass killings. One of the objects that survived is a four-hour VHS tape filmed by Alisa’s father, Sejfo who captured everyday life before the massacre.

Six months after the war, Alisa’s father was still missing. Then the tape arrived addressed: To Alisa, from Dad. Decades later, using footage from the tape, Alisa rediscovered the lost world of her childhood and began to confront one of Europe’s darkest chapters.

Alisa has produced a documentary film on what she found The Srebrenica Tape – From Dad, for Alisa. Messages of Love from the War.

Presenter Asya Fouks
Producer Eric Mugaju

Get in touch: [email protected] or WhatsApp +44 330 678 2707

(Photo: Alisa around the age of three together with her mother Dana and father Sejfo, before the Bosnian war. Credit : Alisa Smajlović)