Scream For Me Sarajevo Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Scream For Me Sarajevo Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 29, 2018

Eagle Rock Entertainment is arguably the leading purveyor of music related concert videos and “behind the music” documentaries, at least in the worlds of rock, pop and jazz. Over the years the label has released an astounding list of Blu-rays, but in my years of reviewing their releases, I’ve encountered nothing quite like Scream for Me Sarajevo, a documentary which I guess might be stuffed into the “behind the music” category, even if it addresses issues that are vastly more far reaching than how an album got recorded or what the musicians were going through when they recorded it. As the back cover of Scream for Me Sarajevo comments, the documentary “is the story of the most unlikely of rock concerts”, one that took place in the kind of weirdly forgotten Seige of Sarajevo. That in and of itself might be enough to set Scream for Me Sarajevo apart from the bulk of its “behind the music” kin, but this piece actually doesn’t spend that much time on the actual concert, instead focusing on a host of other issues like, you know, the Seige of Sarajevo. It may therefore not be the “typical” product fans of Eagle Rock Entertainment have come to expect, but it’s an often bracing and rather involving documentary showing how those rebellious types who tend to love rock ‘n’ roll won’t let a little thing like a war in the middle of their city keep them from their love of music.

History buffs may kind of ironically tend to think of Sarajevo in terms of its “formative influence” on World War I, since it was where Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were murdered, than to associate it with relatively more recent conflicts. Scream for Me Sarajevo doesn’t really get into the epochal history of the city, and in fact for some it may not even provide a ton of context for the seige itself, but there is some really disturbing archival footage of what being in Sarajevo during the 1990s was like. It was in no uncertain terms a real war zone — there are shots of mortars being fired (and landing), buildings on fire, people desperately running from gunfire and a litany of other moments that would seem to suggest that even thinking about music would have been impossible.

But through a series of rather engaging interviews (a lot of this feature is in Bosnian, with English — or other language — subtitles available), it becomes clear that a little thing like daily carnage was not going to keep rock lovers from trying to continue their lives. There are some kind of cool reminiscences (and some archival video as well) of “underground” performances, but the putative focus of the documentary is on the efforts to convince erstwhile Iron Maiden member Bruce Dickinson to lend his talents to a “big” concert in Sarajevo, in the midst of daily bombings and other skirmishes. It seems patently insane, and perhaps only someone from a “head banging” aggregation would have been foolhardy enough to even consider it.

While Dickinson is on hand here and is certainly affable and charming, it’s really the “natives” that give this piece its flavor. This is a fascinating document of people living in hellish conditions who, along with a little help from some outsiders (including some United Nations types) banded together to try to bring something special to a beleaguered populace. The fact that they actually succeeded seems to surprise them a little, but the sad thing that becomes evident is that Sarajevo is still in the process of recovering from the Seige, even if music has become an easier escape than it was back in the day.

Scream For Me Sarajevo Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Scream for Me Sarajevo is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Vision, an imprint of Eagle Rock Entertainment, and Universal Music Group with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. As tends to be the case with documentaries cobbled together from a wide variety of source material, there's a pretty heterogeneous appearance on display throughout this piece. The contemporary shot footage typically looks very good, with commendable detail levels and a natural looking palette. The archival material varies greatly in condition, with some frankly looking pretty ragged and a lot hobbled by the conditions in which it was shot.

Scream For Me Sarajevo Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

While our specs detail an English language track delivered in LPCM 2.0, as mentioned above, a great deal of this documentary is actually spoken in native tongues, of which I'm assuming Bosnian is the major one (though in researching this aspect, maybe they're speaking Croatian or Serbian, since those two languages are evidently also spoken in the region). One way or the other, this really isn't a "music video" in any major way, and so snippets of tunes and/or performances may in fact be featured, but they're kind of incidental to the main story and used as interstitial material rather than the "main act" (so to speak). As a talking head feature, the stereo track suffices perfectly well, and all of the contemporary sequences sound fine. As should be expected, audio on some of the archival footage is as variable as the video element described above.

Scream For Me Sarajevo Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Sadly, there are no supplements on this Blu-ray disc. While the documentary does a rather good job of detailing what being in Bosnia during this time was like, I personally wouldn't have minded some background on the history of the region and more information on the conflict. It seems especially noteworthy that the Seige was evidently one of the longest in modern warfare, and a bit more information might have been helpful for Western history dolts (like yours truly) who weren't paying that much attention to it at the time of its occurrence.

Scream For Me Sarajevo Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Scream for Me Sarajevo is one of the more fascinating Blu-ray discs I've reviewed coming from Eagle Rock Entertainment, and it serves as both a history lesson of sorts, as well as a primer on the resilience of the human spirit under rather daunting conditions. Dickinson fans will almost certainly want to check this out, but I have to say anyone with an interest in how music can act as a soothing balm (even if it's head banging rock 'n' roll) may find this documentary unexpectedly relevant and even moving. Archival elements feature intermittently ragged video and audio, but the contemporary shot material all looks and sounds fine. Recommended.