Sabina Vajrača presents an unforgettable story in her short Sevap/Mitzvah. I talked to her via zoom before she headed out for the Cleveland Film Festival. Her background was enviable, almost out of a film itself, with her framed poster subtly on display and a collection of content potted plants. It suits her own short with its comfortable elegance in the homes of ordinary Bosnians during Nazi occupation. Sevap/Mitzvah follows the real events.

Zejneba Hardaga was the first Muslim women to be honoured with the title Righteous Among the Nations for saving Jewish families in Bosnia. Sevap/Mitzvah looks at her decision to save her childhood friend Rifka Kabiljo, and her family, once the Nazis started to round people up in their town. Decades later, during the Bosnian war, Kabiljo and her children sent out a search to return the favour. It’s a story we should all know more about. 

I asked Vajrača where she first heard about it. “Honestly, Google. I was really interested in telling a story about Muslims and Jews helping one another. You know there’s so much of a narrative about them hating one another, like all those stories coming from the Gaza strip. I found since coming to America, people are constantly commenting on how I can have Jewish friends. I find it such a weird thing to comment on because I come from a country in which these different ethnicities and different religious backgrounds were co-existing harmoniously for centuries.

I wanted to tell a story that was more in line with how I was raised and where I grew up, so I started Googling. I was like, ‘I know there’s stories my grandmother told me about Muslims and Christians saving Jews during World War II. I knew I could make up a story, but then people are like ‘oh that’s just far-fetched. It’s your idealistic imagination.’ I felt that something that really happened had more power to really send a message.

Then, I came across the photo I use at the end of the film of the two of them walking in 1940. One of them is covered, and covering the Star of David of her Jewish friend under her burkha. I started looking into it, and reading more. It’s sad. It’s a famous photo but only in a very limited circle. Within like 2000 people. It’s such a remarkable story, like something Hollywood movies make up all the time. You don’t have to make this up sometimes. Life is much more impressive than the stories we make up. I thought, ‘this is one I need to tell.’ So here I am.”

Sevap/Mitzvah challenges modern cultural binaries as much as those from the last century. “In times of stress we tend to draw into our tribe, like cavemen. ‘Do not trust the tribe on the other side of the hill.’ Part of our brain is still there and it gets easily triggered the moment we feel threatened. But there’s a reason why that’s the small part of our brain. We have the prefrontal cortex to overpower that. We developed as a species over millennia to come to a place where we can recognise that and say, ‘at the end of the day we’re all human.’ If evil aliens came down, I don’t think they would care.

We get mired in these labels that are just man-made. I’m really drawn to this story because I don’t believe in that. My parents taught me there’s good people and bad people no matter what label you put on it. You try to find the good people, the people who want the best for humanity, who put other people first. I just believe in that. Goodness begets goodness. Maybe it’s naive in today’s time, everybody’s very cynical, and the world is full of people getting ahead who are not necessarily kind and compassionate, but I think at the end of the day goodness will prevail.”

Rather than seeming naive, the film puts forward the living proof of that faith in humanity despite horrific alternatives. Vajrača’s example of aliens fits well. At a tense moment in the film, a local man known to Hardaga stops her. He’s joined the Nazis and is searching for anyone hiding from them. Hardaga pretends to be married to Kabiljo’s husband and the mother of her children in order to save them. The man lets her know her before she leaves that they’ll be coming for the Muslim community next. It’s a more sinister version of Bonhoeffer’s famous quote. 

“My family were from a part of Bosnia, up north, that was occupied right early in the Bosnian War. My family is Muslim and we were targeted and had to live through a very similar situation. You don’t think it’s ever going to happen to you, and you kind of look the other way. The famous quote, you know. When evil starts conquering, they don’t care. Somebody has to step up and say, ‘we need to use whatever small amount of power we have.’

In this particular story, these people are not powerful, especially Zejneba. She powerless in the situation and yet she still finds a way to get her cause across. I find that really inspiring. Especially because we all feel so powerless most of the time and just say, ‘it’s a big problem but, like, I’m safe.’ I wanted to remind us that even though we might feel safe in that particular moment, it may not last. So what we do now reflects on many generations to come.”

Hardaga was afforded only the status of a married women in her husband’s house. Yet, she leverages that against his family, since her husband is away and cannot speak on the matter of protecting those in need. I asked Vajrača how she went about finding people who also believed in this vision and the project. 

“I wrote a script and I applied to an organisation in New York called Claims Conference. They offer grants for films about Jewish experiences. I thought, ‘this is perfect.’ They really liked it and I ended up winning the grant in 2021. I was already going to do it, no matter what, but that was an enormous support because they basically financed the film. We got a little more from the Bosnian Government once we were actually in production. I decided to spend the money in Bosnia. It’s a movie about Bosnia. So that even the people people in Bosnia have forgotten this is a country that for centuries was open and welcoming to anybody.

When Jews were fleeing Europe and persecution in the 1500’s, they came to Bosnia. They were welcomed and they didn’t have to live segregated. There was always this welcoming about this particular place in the world that you could just come in and exist and be one with everybody. We’ve forgotten that. The last war really was traumatic and segregating, and the politics now is very ‘us versus them’. I wanted to tell a story that tells the world how we really are. And that also reminds us that this is what we really are.

So I said, ‘I’m going to Bosnia. I’m going to have only Bosnian cast and crew.’ Which is great on paper, but I didn’t know anyone there in a town I’m not from. They have their own very insular film community and I’m an outsider. Not only an outside because I’m coming from America but I’m not from that town and nobody can vouch for me, and say, ‘I know her family.’ I just happened to speak the language but, as they put it, I was just a rich American that’s gonna come and foolishly spend money in this country like all the well-meaning NGOs. I said, ‘sure you can see me that way but this is a story we really need to tell.’

I really lucked out being introduced to Kerim Mašović, my producer. He really does exemplify this nature. He’s someone that if shit hit the fan and we had really stressful situations on set, he would just constantly remind me, ‘we have to trust what we are doing and it’s gonna work out.’ That was really wonderful. He started bringing people on board because he’s part of this community and he really encouraged me.

I really believe in giving opportunities to people who don’t necessarily get to do what they’re very talented in. Bosnia is a very small film community. They don’t make that many movies, understandably, so you’re always going to ask your friends. But there’s a huge pool of extremely talented individuals who are not getting the chance to showcase. He started bringing people to me and that’s how I assembled my crew. I didn’t know anybody and it was really interesting because some people I cast are really big names in Bosnia, but I didn’t know.”

She jokes that she would cast someone based on a great audition and then get asked how she managed to get them in her movie. She adds it might be because they respected that there was no ego and they got the job on merit alone.

“It was really important to me. It was also important to have a set on which everyone is really collaborative and supportive, and there’s no tension. I like my set calm. I want to protect my actors so they can give me the best performances. So it’s really important that no one on set is a bully of any kind. It starts from the top. There’s a lot of this idea that as an auteur you’re supposed to be an asshole. You’re supposed to come in and yell at everyone. Like the whole ‘fire somebody on your first day so everyone is scared of you.’ I’m not somebody who works well in those environments.

So I started it for myself. I’m the most creative when I’m encouraged, not when I’m ridiculed. I’m like, ‘well, I’m gonna surrounded myself with people who work like I do so we can collaborate together rather than them being scared of me. I don’t need to be a tyrant because that’s not how you create art. You create art because you collaborate and trust you bring people to the table who extremely talented in this one thing that they do. If they’re somehow off path because they have some crazy idea, you encourage it. It’s really important to respect people enough to allow them to bring these ideas to the table without fear.” 

She adds this is partly due to her background in theatre where the director is only there at the start and then everyone can take over and change it once they’ve gone. I ask what else this experience gave her.

“The number one is the way I work with actors. Theatre really teaches you to be humble and to really respectfully listen to everybody else involved. The last thing that really influences me is transitions because they kind of theatre I was doing was very devised, experimental, very movement based. So it was drilled into me, ‘how do you transition and how do you end?’ In a play you have to end in a way that when the lights go down, people know to start clapping. It’s something I got from my mentor, it’s like you’re hitting a button to create a break between scenes. You have to end it and you’ll create a transition that way.”

Given the complexity of real lives, that makes clear transitions tricky, I ask how she went about writing a historical figure. Could she keep close to her voice or was it almost impossible? 

“It was a little impossible because she passed away in 1993. I tried reaching out to her extended family and finding people who would have known her but nobody is alive who would have known her back in the forties. I had to really sit down and think about ‘who is this?’ She’s 23 when the whole thing was happening. Can you imagine? You’ve already been married for four years. You have a 4 year old and another a year and a half old. You’re married in a very traditional household in which the husband is the boss of you and you’re supposed to just be a good and obedient wife. How does a person that young, with all those restrictions like the older men, still do what she did?

It’s one thing for us, as modern women in modern times, to be like ‘I’m gonna put myself in her shoes.’ So I thought, ‘who is somebody who can actually do what she did under the circumstances she was living.’ So I really channelled the women in my family like my grandmother and my mom. My mom’s number one advice that she told me was that she always said, ‘people will assume a lot of things about you. They’re going to see you and create a picture. Instead of fighting them, instead of wanting to convince them you are whoever you think you are as oppose to who they perceive you to be, use their prejudices to your advantage.’

And my mom does. When we came to America, none of us really spoke English but she didn’t speak a word, so people assumed that she was really stupid. She was this very beautiful woman, 39 years old, with 2 young kids and didn’t speak English, so people made a lot of assumptions that she didn’t know what she was doing. She used it to her advantage and we managed to survive and thrive in America because of her. So I thought about what would Zejneba do with a lot of people assuming things about her? How does she manipulate all these people in her life to get what she wants without attacking them?

I’m from America and it’s a very American approach of ‘here’s our voice and here’s our roar.’ But this character is a Bosnian woman in 1940, so what would my mother do? What would my grandmother do? Last month I got contacted by her granddaughter who lives in Mexico and that was really wonderful because they watched the film and they loved it. So even though I didn’t really have the details, I obviously captured her spirit because her son was like ‘that’s exactly how she was.’ When you tell real stories you’re always worried you’re going to screw it up so it felt really great.” 

I add that there’s something to be said about how loudly her actions reflect her.

“Yeah. I’m over-thinker, but when it comes to situations like this my knee jerk reaction is to help. My dad spent the entire Bosnian War in our hometown which was occupied by Serb forces. He was running underground humanitarian operations, saving people from concentration camps and doing this whole thing. Yet another person who figured out how to manipulate people’s prejudices in his favour.

Something he told me a lot was that when danger comes, like suddenly a grenade goes off, there’s a shooting, or a car crash, there’s two kinds of people. There are people who run away from it and people who run towards it and see if they can help. My dad is definitely a person who runs towards and I’m also a person who runs towards. So I thought about someone who would run towards a situation and say, ‘okay, who needs help?’ She would have had to be a person like that to do what she did.”

It’s a very different approach to that of Bazigaga director Jo Ingabire Moys who decided to base a character off of another woman who saved people from genocide instead. It’s all the more impressive than that these alternate routes made for two incredible shorts. I ask if there are future plans for the project and her response leaves me all the more desperate for a feature on this incredible woman.

“My goal is to turn this film into a feature, to get the financing, because there’s so much more to this story. I mean she saved not only the Kabiljo’s but at least three other families that I’ve discovered since I was Bosnia. I’m sure there were more as well because, like I said, Bosnia is very integrated and there was no segregation.

So their house, even though- oh, her husband! She married into a wealthy family, so her husband was a wealthy landowner and a businessman, a merchant. They had this property on which they would rent stores right across from the synagogue. So most of their renters and most of the people around them were Jewish. When the Gestapo came to the city, they took over the synagogue and the place right next to it, so the Gestapo was right across the street from them. Perhaps because it was right in her face, she was like ‘I have to get this person across the fence and into the house.’ Then she’d find fake papers and smuggle them out which is kind of like running her own resistance in her backyard.”