Go West (Ideme na Zapad) is the new film by writer/director Ahmed Imamovic. Released in the director's homeland of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2005, it was recently screened in the U.S. at the NYC GLBT Newfest film festival on June 7th where it was named Best Foreign Film.

The subject of gays and gay life is still very much taboo in much of Eastern Europe. Go West offers a provocative and highly artistic cinematic treatment of the complex relationship between homosexuality and the ultra-nationalism common in the war-torn Balkan countries. In doing so, it breaks new ground while causing controversy all throughout morally conservative Eastern Europe.

“This film is a reflection of the surroundings we have been living in for the last 15 years”, Imamovic recently told the BBC. “It is a condemnation of all the prejudices in the Balkans that almost always result in a bloodshed.”

In Go West, Kenan, a Muslim cellist, lives with his lover Milan, a Serbian student, in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. Kenan's Islamic faith, marked by his circumcision, makes him a prime target for violence. (Men are regularly “examined” by the Bosnian military in surprise searches).

Fearing that Serb forces will kill Kenan for being Muslim, Milan disguises Kenan as a woman--transforming him into “Milena”, Milan's wife.

As the war escalates, the two lovers flee to the small Serbian village where Milan grew up. Kenan is introduced to the townspeople as Milan's young bride. The quaint, backward and very patriarchal village community accepts the charade.

Milan and Kenan must bide their time, hoping that Milan's father Ljubo, who is also a prominent patriarch in the little village, can somehow pull strings and get them safe passage to the Netherlands.

But suddenly Milan is drafted into the war, leaving Kenan behind with Milan‘s family to fend for himself and maintain his cross-dressing disguise. As he waits for Milan's return, all that Kenan (now Milena) can do is settle into his role as a peasant woman.

The horrors of war and especially the ethnic hatreds of this battle-scarred land have severely affected the village and all its inhabitants. Genocide and bigotry have poisoned everything and everyone. All the villagers are on a war footing, with an all-pervasive fear coloring everyone's actions.

The entire countryside appears as a Fellini-esque no-man's land of makeshift graves, smoldering ruins and discarded military machinery. It is not unlike the quasi-apocalyptic wasteland depicted in George Miller's Mad Max trilogy.

Nomadic vigilante gangs, scavenging refugee children, mournful war widows and demented religious fanatics wander about, haunting the desolate landscape.

Kenan suffers through this grotesque purgatory of lost souls, where the villagers seem more like carnival sideshow freaks than simple country folk. As the situation becomes more and more emotionally unbearable, Kenan begins to lose both his patience and his sanity.

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