Surviving hell was just the first step.

SARAJEVO ROSES is a compelling documentary in progress told through the eyes and experiences of Dr. Asim Haracic, a Bosnian-American psychiatrist and musician who survived the Siege of Sarajevo and is now working to heal the victims of violence in his adopted home of Washington, D.C.

During the four-year siege of the Bosnian capital city of Sarajevo, hundreds of thousands of bombs rained upon the city from the surrounding hills. Every shell exploding on a road or paved area left an imprint resembling that of a flower. Today, some of these craters remain, their 'petals' painted red and referred to as 'Sarajevo roses' by its citizens, like scars on the heart, a reminder of the innocent blood that was spilled on these streets.

As the longest siege of the 20th Century rages, Dr. Asim Haracic alternates daily shifts as an army medic on the frontlines of the besieged city and as emergency room doctor at Kosevo hospital, using his skills to help wounded citizens of Sarajevo survive the daily shelling and sniper fire from Radovan Karadzic's nationalist Serb army. He finds himself living an existentialist nightmare of no hope for the future, where the meaning of life is defined simply as a struggle for day-to-day survival.

In 1995, after surviving 3 and a half years under siege, he sends his wife and their four-month-old son through the only escape route from Sarajevo. They crawl through an underground tunnel under the tarmac of the airport, ringed by Karadzic's forces. They then trudge on foot, at night, over heavily mined Mount Igman, the site of the 1984 Winter Olympics biathlon event. Finding sanctuary in the USA, they set about rebuilding their lives and eventually become US citizens.

Moving to near Washington, DC, the doctor begins composing songs and also putting to music some of the poems in a friend’s war journal, as part of his healing process from the emotional toll of war. Ironically, Dr. Asim Haracic, who retrained as a psychiatrist when he came to America, now counsels citizens of the Washington, DC area suffering from mental trauma resulting from violence and personal loss. 

The most important aspect of SARAJEVO ROSES is that it offers an insight into how a beautiful, modern 20th century city that hosted the 1984 Winter Olympic Games, an event celebrating and showcasing the pinnacle of humanity’s athletic achievement and brotherhood, could only eight years later become a symbol of the lowest of forms of man’s depravity and brutality toward his neighbor. For generations to come these questions will be asked by scholars and historians.  This film is a meditation on how the near dismantling of civilization as we know it can happen in a brief span of time when the right, or wrong, conditions are created.  It also explores the concept of memory, both personal and collective, and how distorted history and memory can be passed down through generations and used to justify extremism and destroying ‘the other’.

SARAJEVO ROSES is the story one man’s search for inner peace after the trauma of war, and a personal testimony to his descendants in the hope that they will come to understand that love and living fully in the present is the best thing we can hope for as human beings.

Filmmaker/photographer Roger M. Richards in 1992 began documenting the siege of Sarajevo during the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia. His work chronicled the entire war and the city’s transition to peace over the span of 17 years.  During the war his path crossed with the doctor several times, but they never met until peacetime.