Page - 80 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/01

80 | Milja Radovic www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 73–89 Peacebuilding involves a number of different acts, such as the act of forgiveness or the act of repentance, that have transformative potential and power. Peacebuilding therefore is intertwined with transformative practices that are embedded in these acts. All these acts that are pertinent to peacebuilding have moral and ethical value, but they can also be considered “beyond ethics”,49 and as such carry an ontologi- cal and even religious quality. When “love for thy neighbour” (the foreign, alienated Other) is enacted, it is not “love out of obligation” but love “because of ontological affinity”.50 Here is the religious aspect of love, for when love “is not preceded by any ethical must” but is ontological,51 it becomes an expression of a mode of existence – of being with the Other. In going beyond being just a “voice of the oppressed”, the creative acts of the filmmakers are also transformative acts of peacebuilding. ACTS OF PEACEBUILDING AND ACTIVISM THROUGH FILM Looking at activist citizenship through film means looking at both acts and performa- tivity. Films re-create events that happened or could have taken place in real life. Of- ten, when it is based on a true event, film represents what I call “a scene of a scene”, a re-created event through which actors are (re)created and acts realised. How does this happen? How does film encapsulate an act of citizenship, and does film simultane- ously represent a product that is an act of citizenship? Circles (Krugovi, Srdan Golubovic, 2013) One film that captures an act of citizenship is Circles (Krugovi, 2013; Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, German and French co-production), made by Serbian director Srdan Gol- ubovic. Golubovic was inspired by the real-life story of Srdjan Aleksic, a Bosnian Serb from the town of Trebinje in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Before the war, Srdjan had been an actor in the local theatre and a sportsman. As war escalated in the 1990s, Srdjan was recruited by the army of Republika Srpska. In 1993, a group of his fellow Serbian soldiers in the city centre of Trebinje attacked his neighbour Alen Glavovic because they identified him as a Bosniak and not a Serb. Srdjan stood up against the soldiers, so they turned against him. The citizens of Trebinje observed the event without tak- ing any action. Glavovic was saved, but Srdjan died from his injuries; he had protected his neighbour, the foreign Other, who was attacked precisely because of his ethnicity and religious affiliation. The story of Srdjan Aleksic inspired the director, who wanted to explore in his film the meaning of a good act and the performance of a human deed that in the given circumstances could only have a fatal outcome. The film depicts this real-life event in 49 If the highest value is existence, then ethics stems from that value. Zizioulas 1985, 12. 50 Zizioulas 1985, 8. 51 Zizioulas 1985, 11.