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A besieged Sarajevo turns to music in 'Kiss the Future' — and one band hears the call

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A scene from the documentary Kiss the Future.
(Screenocean / Reuters Pictures / Damir Sagolj)

A besieged Sarajevo turns to music in 'Kiss the Future' and one band hears the call

Feb. 23, 2024

Across During the years of relentless attacks on Sarajevo in the early 1990s, residents tried to turn off the sounds of the siege all around them by turning on music

:

as a release,

of course,

but also as a bid to feel normal amid Serbian bombs and sniper fire. What happened when this underground scenes

rock-tinged strains of

defiance reached U2 frontman Bonos ears is

at

the

beating

heart of director Nenad Cicin-Sains documentary Kiss the Future.

T

Just as the Oscar-nominated Ukraine dispatch 20 Days at Mariupol galvanizes

us

with its portrait of life under an aggressors evil, and the hit Netflix doc The Greatest Night in Pop reassures

us viewers

that good is possible when artists come together for a cause,

. T

the

war-meets-music

story that Kiss the Future tells culminating in U2s 1997 concert in Sarajevo, two years after the Dayton

p

Peace

accords Agreement

offers an admirably potent blend of darkness and light. Specifically, the light that can emerge from darkness.

In

its the film’s

archival video, home footage

,

and testimonials, its a harrowing reminder of the Bosnian Wars impact on

besieged

Sarajevans, told by the people who lived through it (and its most famous correspondent, CNNs Christiane Amanpour, as well as former

US

President Bill Clinton). But it also shows what renewal looks like when one of the biggest bands in the world represented here by interviews with Bono,

T

the Edge

,

and Adam Clayton amplifies your plight and makes good on a promise to celebrate your survival. Only a few years prior to that celebrated show at Sarajevos Koevo stadium, the onetime Olympic venue had been a wartime grave site.

First, Cicin-Sain offers a helpful primer in how Yugoslavias breakup set the stage for a territorial war waged by Bosnian Serbs,

directed led

by Slobodan Milosevic

,

and designed to shatter the multiethnic fabric of Sarajevo. As atrocities mounted, the city crumbled

,

and world leaders did nothing

, c

. But culture-starved Sarajevans created a thriving

,

generator-powered basement scene of art,

dance,

rock (one drummer kept showing up to play after losing a hand),

danceing,

theater

(a punk Hair proved popular),

and spotty TV broadcasts.

In 1993, Bill Carter, a young transplanted American aid worker (and a regular onscreen commentator), schemed to get Sarajevos troubles noticed by angling for an interview with Bono when U2s media-circus-themed Zoo TV tour stopped in nearby Italy. The appeal to prestige rocks premier empath worked:

.

The footage from that consequential 13-minute meet-up is fascinating.

; w W

e see Bono transform from a no-eye-contact

-please

megastar

s hesitancy

to an activist son of Ireland in full engagement

with the power to help

.

Soon, the band was regularly interrupting their European concerts for real-time satellite linkups to Carter in undisclosed locations.

with everyday Sarajevans, even if, the members admit now, U2 now admits

that these well-intentioned bids to spread

needed

awareness smacked of reality TV:

pain and anguish as entertainment,

Bono describes it

here

as pain and anguish as entertainment in a welcome moment of candor

about the pitfalls of mixing principles and performance

.

In its brisk pace, well-deployed song choices

,

and storytelling energy, Kiss the Future is

fairly

skillful at avoiding seeming like an ode to U2, even though the band’s involvement

fillsis

over half the movie.

, and t T

he 1997 concert is certainly presented as the moment

when

Bosnians felt theyd re-entered the wider world. It does seem a missed opportunity, however, not to give us more about the local bands

that were

chosen to open for U2, or richer sketches of the Bosnian participants for whom we know art was a regular lifeline.

Much is made, though, of that In the

most ironic of setbacks for a consciousness-raising pop star

, Bono’s

shot vocal cords

that left himBono

unable to sing through much of the bands set list. It may be

a the

reason

why

footage from that eventful night in Sarajevo hasnt been widely seen outside U2s inner circle.

before Kiss the Future.

But

it’s a

lso why this heartfelt documentary is the right

platformvenue

for it,

since we learn given

who made up for all those missing verses: a battle-scarred but emotional audience of over 40,000

people

who knew

the every

word

s,

and could fill

the absence with aat gap with a free, clear and

collective voice.

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