HRV 2022 | Director: Vedrana Pribačić | Script: Vedrana Pribačić, Mirta Puhlovski | Camera: Dario Hacek | Editor: Marta Broz | Production: Mirta Puhlovski, Metar 60, Hrvatska radiotelevizija (HRT) | Colour | DCP | 90 min | croatian OV with english SUB | Metar 60

It was not until the 1990s, with the establishment of the special tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, that serious international attempts were made to systematically prosecute sexualised war violence. The testimonies of Bosnian women who had the courage to speak publicly about their experiences of violence were a particularly crucial contribution to this development. In the meantime, the permanent International Criminal Court has proclaimed rape in war to be a crime against humanity and a war crime.

BIGGER THAN TRAUMA tells the story of a group of women who seek healing after being victims of such crimes in Croatia in the early 1990s. Under the umbrella of Croatian NGO "Sunčica", a team of five has developed an elaborate psychotherapeutic programme that combines elements such as osteopathy, neurolinguistic programming (NLP) and classical psychotherapy with a group therapy approach. 25 years after the end of the war, the participants of this programme, women in their mid- to late 50s, were accompanied by the camera for three years as they came to terms with their traumatic past together. With care and respectful proximity, the film describes four individual fates, as well as the collective healing path that the therapeutic process makes possible despite conflicts in the group. (Gaby Babić, 2023)