Screengrab Review: "After the War: Life Post-Yugoslavia"

As a European country deeply immersed in the modern language of film before it was plunged into chaos and war in the post-Soviet period, it's no surprise that the former Yugoslavia has produced some of the most striking films on the nature of war in recent years.  After the War:  Life Post-Yugoslavia, releasing in September from independent distributor A Million Movies a Minute, collects nine short films (none longer than half an hour) which deal with, in varying degrees of success, the human aftermath of the wars between the former Yugoslav states that tore the region apart.

Serbian filmmaker Zelimir Gvardiol is the most represented here, contributing four of the nine films; his affinity for his own people burns through the lens, threatening at times to overwhelm the universality of his stories but never quite succumbing.  These are relentlessly bleak stories, from the heartbreaking "I Don't Know Where, or When, or How", which documents the devastating effect the deprivation and disruption of the war had on the elderly, to "It's Only Mine", a depressing document of the struggle of former Serbian landowners to recoup their holdings from generations before.  The best of the lot is "Ravens", the story of a father who publicly refutes the medal for bravery granted to his late son by Slobodan Milosevic.  It's a remarkably concise portrait of the deep societal and ethnic divisions that remain after the war.

The rest of the collection is somewhat hit-and-miss.  Bosnia's Jasmina Zbanic turns in "Red Rubber Boots", a grim story of a mother's search in mass graves for the bodies of her two children, a shockingly bleak tale that is somewhat undercut by the maudlin quality of the film; and American filmmaker Roberto Forns-Broggi's "House of Wisdom", a documentary about the damage done to the national library and other symbols of Yugoslav culture during the war, sacrifices its excellent verit