10.54103/2036-461X/20518
European co-productions are usually the most ambitious European films, combining multiple sources of financing and targeting both transnational audiences and critical acclaim. However, their success with audiences is often quite limited in terms of admissions. In this article, we investigate the sources of this audience challenge for European co-productions adopting the perspective centered on audience design. We look at what we define as “ideal European co-productions”—films of high artistic value with festival visibility, an “ideal script” and clear socio-cultural and political value. We identify, drawing primarily on literature in theatre studies, four different groups of target audiences for these films—average spectators, emancipated spectators, spect-actors and emancipated spect-actors—and offer a framework for understanding what mobilizes these audience groups to seek out and view films. We then use Quo Vadis, Aida?, a 2020 film by Jasmila Žbanić, as an in-depth case study to show how, in practice, a lack of strategy at both production and distribution stage can result in failing to reach the target audiences even for films that show significant audience potential and have well-defined socio-political goals. We end the study pointing to the limitations of our work as well as offering suggestions for further research and policy development.
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
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Audience Impact of European Co-production: The Case of Quo Vadis, Aida?
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Stojanović, Milica, and Samir Kajošević. 2021. “In Serbia and Montenegro, Srebrenica is Still Politically Toxic.” Balkan Insight. July 8, 2021. https://balkaninsight.com/2021/07/08/in-serbia-and-montenegro-srebrenica-is-still-politically-toxic/.
Audience Impact of European Co-production: The Case of Quo Vadis, Aida?
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                                                                                       Audience Impact of European
                                                                                       Co-production:
                                                                                       The Case of Quo Vadis, Aida?
                                                                                       Petar Mitrić, University of Copenhagen
                                                                                       Tamara Kolarić, Dublin City University




                                                                                       European co-productions are usually the most ambitious European films, combining                            Keywords
                                                                                       multiple sources of financing and targeting both transnational audiences and critical
                                                                                                                                                                                      European Co-productions
                                                                                       acclaim. However, their success with audiences is often quite limited in terms of admis-
                                                                                       sions. In this article, we investigate the sources of this audience challenge for European
                                                                                                                                                                                             Audience Design
                                                                                       co-productions adopting the perspective centered on audience design. We look at what                Audience Activation
                                                                                       we define as “ideal European co-productions”—films of high artistic value with festi-                 Quo Vadis, Aida?
                                                                                       val visibility, an “ideal script” and clear socio-cultural and political value. We identify,       Srebrenica Genocide
                                                                                       drawing primarily on literature in theatre studies, four different groups of target au-                            DOI
                                                                                       diences for these films—average spectators, emancipated spectators, spect-actors and                     https://doi.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License




                                                                                       emancipated spect-actors—and offer a framework for understanding what mobilizes                  org/10.54103/2036-
                                                                                       these audience groups to seek out and view films. We then use Quo Vadis, Aida?, a 2020                   461X/20518
                                                                                       film by Jasmila Žbanić, as an in-depth case study to show how, in practice, a lack of stra-
                                                                                       tegy at both production and distribution stage can result in failing to reach the target
                                                                                       audiences even for films that show significant audience potential and have well-defined
                                                                                       socio-political goals. We end the study pointing to the limitations of our work as well as
                                                                                       offering suggestions for further research and policy development.




                                                                                       INTRODUCTION
                                                                                         Co-producing has been a pivotal tool in European audiovisual policy since the
                                                                                       end of WWII, fostering increased financing sources, broader release territories,
                                                                                       and heightened production value, while facilitating a cross-national exchange
                                                                                       of creative ideas and talent. Heavily funded by public subsidies, co-productions
                                                                                       sustain numerous independent European production companies, ensuring
                                                                                       high artistic freedom for European auteurs, elevating the volume of European
                                                                                       production, and garnering festival awards (Hammet-Jamart, Mitrić, and Novrup
                                                                                       Redvall 2018).
                                                                                         However, distribution reports reveal that the audience success of European
                                                                                       co-productions remains constrained. With few exceptions, European co-
                                                                                       productions seldom attract significant mainstream audiences, as viewers
                                                                                       increasingly turn to US streaming platforms. The pervasive digitization and the
                                                                                       enduring impact of the pandemic have only accelerated this trend in recent


                                                                                       Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 41 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X                                                                73
     years (Eskilsson 2023; Gubbins 2022).
        Several evident political-economic factors contribute to this audience
     challenge. Chief among them is the lack of sufficient distribution and marketing
     support within the European independent film sector (Drake 2018). With a focus
     on supply rather than demand, European film funds often prioritize financing
     production over distribution, resulting in the overproduction of European films
     and market oversaturation. Another factor is the global unavailability of European
     films, even those with world sales agents attached. The dominant territory-by-
     territory sales and distribution model, intended to maintain film exclusivity and
     increase income through multiple territorial sales, paradoxically renders many
     films unsold and invisible. Additionally, the language barrier poses a significant
     challenge, as many co-productions are crafted in local European languages,
     limiting their connection with global audiences.
        Yet, European filmmakers themselves may bear some accountability for
     the audience challenge. Depending heavily on public subsidies and facing few
     consequences for audience failures (especially if they perform well at festivals),
     filmmakers may prioritize catering to the taste of selection committees of
     public film funds and programmers of A-list festivals over reaching the
     average spectator. In this article, we explore the necessity for filmmakers to
     design an audience for their films and examine how the co-production status
     aids in reaching audiences. Our focus centers on a representative European
     co-production—Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020, hereinafter Aida) by Jasmila Žbanić. It
     serves as a paradigmatic and (possibly) generalizable European case, being a
     well-crafted and award-winning film co-produced by nine European countries,
     with the potential to reach a broader audience. Being directed by a Bosnian
     director and set in Bosnia, Aida has been a subject of studies within the fields of
     Balkan cinema and memory studies (Jelača 2021; Lovrić and Hernández 2022).
     However, we treat Aida as a European, rather than Balkan, co-production, as the
     audience challenge it illustrates is a European concern that equally impacts the
     entire European film industry.
        Aida boasts wide European distribution, universal themes, high production
     value, and an Oscar nomination. However, official distribution reports indicate
     modest cinema attendance in Europe, totaling 178,000 admissions across
     nineteen release territories (LUMIERE).1 Interestingly, during the same period,
     some other films attracted large audiences, both in ex-Yugoslavia (e.g., Toma,
     Dragan Bjelogrlic and Zoran Lisinac, 2021, with almost 1.5 million admissions)
     and elsewhere in Europe (e.g., co-production Another Round, Thomas Vinterberg,
     2020, with 3 million European admissions), suggesting that the pandemic, online
     releases, and piracy were not insurmountable obstacles.
        Why did Aida experience low admissions, and why do many European co-


     1       The audience numbers for Quo Vadis, Aida? and other films by Žbanić come
     from the European Audiovisual Observatory’s LUMIERE database, which collects data
     on admissions of the films released in European cinemas. Data by country can be acces-
     sed here: https://lumiere.obs.coe.int/movie/88929.



74                            Mitrić, Kolarić, Audience Impact of European Co-production
productions face similar challenges? By introducing the concept of the “ideal
European co-production” and a typology of European audiences, this article
delves into the sources of the audience challenge for European co-productions
and explores the extent to which these challenges can be mitigated.



TOWARDS “THE IDEAL EUROPEAN
CO-PRODUCTION”
  Through an examination of the funding guidelines of European public film funds
and comprehensive interviews and observations of the funds’ administrators
concerning their funding policies, we have distilled a definition of “the ideal
European co-production” as perceived by European policymakers.2 As we
discussed in a previous work (Mitrić and Kolarić 2021), these ideal European
co-productions encompass specific elements. Foremost among these is their
policy-driven nature. Official recognition as “official co-productions” is granted
only after meticulous scrutiny by competent national authorities, ensuring
alignment with the formal criteria outlined in co-production treaties.
  Moreover, an ideal European co-production must strategically combine
selective public financing, validating its cultural and artistic merit, with market-
driven financing that underscores its audience potential. On the distribution
front, it should secure nominations and, preferably, awards at A-list film
festivals. While an ideal scenario involves combining festival accolades with
box-office success, the latter is considered a bonus rather than an essential
element. Importantly, regardless of its apparent commercial and entertaining
nature, the ideal European co-production, even if borrowing from conventional
genres and Hollywood narratives, must avoid being low-brow. It should always
maintain some level of socio-political, cultural, or artistic engagement (Mitrić
and Kolarić 2021).
  From a creative standpoint, the crux of the ideal European co-production lies
in having “the ideal script”. This script is built on meticulously researched or
personally experienced stories, devoid of unnecessary localisms that might
impede its transnational appeal. While adhering to prescribed dramaturgical
conventions, techniques, and narrative forms, the film’s story must inherently
possess clear socio-cultural value. This value should persist, even at the
potential expense of the film’s marketability.
  To foster an environment conducive to generating more ideal scripts,
European policymakers have initiated various measures promoting what Mitrić
has termed “international co-development”: the development of film scripts and
projects transcending national borders. This international co-development at


2        A longitudinal research on European co-production policy was conducted
between 2012 and 2019 when the authors had access to the annual MEDICI workshops
for the administrators of European film funds as well as to documents and personnel of
individual public film funds like Eurimages.



Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 41 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X                                        75
     the European level is nurtured through initiatives such as international training
     and networking programs, co-development funds, and co-productions markets
     (Mitrić 2020, 62–65).



     WHY QUO VADIS, AIDA? IS AN “IDEAL
     EUROPEAN CO-PRODUCTION”?
       Aida is the first film about the genocide in which the army of Bosnian Serbs
     killed over eight thousand Bosniak-Muslim men in the UN-protected town of
     Srebrenica in July 1995. The film uses the female gaze of the main character
     Aida, a translator in the Dutch-UN base who is desperately trying to save her
     husband and two sons from an unavoidable death after the Serbian soldiers enter
     Srebrenica. The Srebrenica genocide is officially the biggest war crime in Europe
     after WWII. Aida reminds us of its forgotten brutality, just as it problematizes the
     bureaucracy of international organizations and massive denial of the genocide
     among both ordinary people and elites in Serbia and the Republic of Srpska (the
     Serbian entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina).
       Aida effortlessly meets the above idealness criteria. It is a policy-driven,
     official co-production of nine countries made in line with the Council of Europe’s
     Convention on European Co-production. The collaboration between the co-
     producing countries is visible both on-screen and off-screen. We hear and see
     Dutch and Bosnian actors on screen, while the film was shot by an Austrian
     cinematographer and edited by a Polish editor. The film also combines multiple
     sources of selective public funding for European co-productions with the market-
     driven financing from broadcasters, distributors, and the reputable sales agent.
     As for the distribution, Aida had an exceptional festival life that started with
     the premiere in the Venice official competition and ended with 43 nominations
     and 30 festival and other awards, including the award for the Best European
     Film, Lux Prize, two BAFTA and one Oscar nomination (IMDb). It had theatrical
     distribution in 19 European countries and VoD release on over 80 European
     streaming platforms (LUMIERE). Finally, even though Aida has the classical film
     narrative and Aristotelian dramaturgy (Janjić 2020), this conventional storytelling
     is disrupted by the film’s distinctive form and style (e.g., with the surrealistic
     opening, the flashback scenes, and the disturbing open-ended closing scene) and
     the film’s ideology (e.g., political provocation and the feminist standpoint view).
       Aida’s script is rooted in the true story of Hasan Nuhanović, a translator stationed
     at the Srebrenica UN base and one of the few male survivors of the genocide. In
     2012, Žbanić’s producer acquired the rights to Nuhanović’s book, Under the UN
     Flag, with the intention of adapting it into a film. However, transforming the book
     into an ideal script proved to be a challenging journey for Žbanić. Initially planning
     to co-develop the script with Nuhanović, her early drafts sparked disagreements
     on the film’s ideology, storyline, and form. Unfortunately, the collaboration came
     to an official end in conflict when the 3-year book option expired.



76                            Mitrić, Kolarić, Audience Impact of European Co-production
  In an open letter and two interviews, Nuhanović critiqued Žbanić’s script,
characterizing it as a “construction” rather than a “reconstruction” of the
Srebrenica genocide. He argued that it downplayed the responsibility of the
Dutch peacekeepers and the brutality of Serbian soldiers. Nuhanović called for
more emphasis on the local Bosniak soldiers defending Srebrenica and greater
sympathy for the people of Srebrenica, who he felt were unfairly portrayed as
“dirty Muslims” (Nuhanović 2019). He envisioned the film as a historical epic and
thriller depicting an international conspiracy in a UN-protected zone betrayed by
the international community (Nuhanović 2019).
  Nuhanović also contended that the script’s feminist standpoint distorted facts,
highlighting that all ten translators in the UN base were men. He expressed
dissatisfaction with a scene where Aida’s husband addresses a woman with
“what a stupid woman” (“ja, glupače”) when she rationalizes his gullibility during
their meeting with Serbian general Ratko Mladić. Since the character of Aida’s
husband is based on Nuhanović’s killed father, he accused Žbanić of constructing
his father’s misogyny (N1 2019).
  Having ended the collaboration with Nuhanović, Žbanić finished the script on
her own. In 2017, the project was selected to participate in the eQuinoxe Europe
International Screenwriters Workshop,3 a competitive European development
program where participants work towards their ideal script in collaboration with
renowned international script-doctors and other fellow-scriptwriters. The project
was also selected for the prestigious Berlinale co-production market. The final
version of the script that attracted the co-production financing was based on a
rather minimalistic story of a woman who makes a series of wrong decisions due
to her helplessness. Instead of offering a national, middle-brow war spectacle
and a historical epic targeting primarily Bosniak mainstream audience, the film
focuses on the universality of the Srebrenica genocide, motherhood, and family,
which makes it relatable to transnational audiences.
  Aida attracted production financing from eight countries in the form of co-
production subsidies from the public film funds combined with support from
public broadcasters as well as MGs and sponsorships. The Venice premiere, an
Oscar nomination, and the best European Film Award (to mention only the most
important accolades) officially confirmed Aida’s idealness in the eyes of European
public film funders and policymakers. Yet, while the critical accolades were many,
there was no wide audience response.




3       See https://www.equinoxe-europe.org/equinoxe-europe.html.



Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 41 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X                                    77
     A POSSIBLE TYPOLOGY OF TARGET
     AUDIENCES FOR EUROPEAN
     CO-PRODUCTIONS
        Considering that most European co-productions are co-financed by public
     subsidies, they are expected to hold distinct cultural value for European
     citizens. European films obviously create a buzz by making box office successes,
     in which case their impact is easily quantified. However, when they are not
     blockbusters (and few of them are) their audience impact tends to be qualitative
     and difficult to track. For instance, the impact can be educational when films
     provide audiences with unconventional poetics or storytelling formats that
     people cannot see in Hollywood productions (Mitrić 2022). Likewise, European
     co-productions sometimes deal with controversial issues that trouble European
     societies and inspire discussions about them.
        However, distribution reports reveal that many European co-productions
     simply do not reach audiences for various reasons. This lack of audience raises
     questions about the purpose of public subsidies for European cinema and the
     level of commitment European filmmakers have to cultivating audiences for their
     films. Constantly pressured to secure public financing, European filmmakers
     often deliver scripts and packages designed to satisfy the gatekeepers of
     European public film agencies rather than European citizens, who, to a large
     extent, finance European co-productions through their taxes.
        The audience component is vaguely defined in the guidelines of public
     film funds’ support schemes. While reaching the audience is considered a
     paramount goal, the available instruments and resources for studying and
     communicating with wider audiences remain scarce and conservative. With
     few exceptions (Freudendal 2024), film funds allocate no funding for audience
     design during the project development phase. They offer limited support for
     alternative distribution practices and establish few mechanisms for measuring
     the qualitative audience impact of European co-productions or for training
     filmmakers who fail to achieve this impact. In this section, we discuss how
     European filmmakers and policymakers can concretely incorporate audience
     impact into their understanding of the ideal European co-production, drawing
     on concepts from theatre studies.
        We focus on specific traditions of engaged and political theatre because their
     audience impact is predominantly qualitative, cultural, and social-democratic,
     aligning with the policy goals of European public film funds and many
     policymakers. Content creators in socially engaged theatre activate their target
     audiences in two ways. One approach nourishes the Aristotelian traditions,
     connecting audiences with a play on primarily sensuous and emotional levels.
     The spectator begins the journey by identifying with a story’s character,
     situation, or sub-plot, culminating in a healing catharsis by the end of the play.
     Another approach builds on the Brechtian traditions, viewing theatre as a space



78                           Mitrić, Kolarić, Audience Impact of European Co-production
for political activism that generates revolutionary ideas, allowing the spectator
to interact with the content on a cognitive and intellectual level.
   Among several of the pioneers of translating these theatrical traditions into
film theory was the filmmaker and theoretician Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. In his
study, The Viewer’s Dialectic (1988), Gutiérrez acknowledges the dual nature of
film, suggesting that a film needs both emotional and intellectual touchpoints
with target audiences to create a lasting impact. Hence, he blends both the
Aristotelian identification effect and the Brechtian alienation effect to define a
successful film. To be impactful, a filmmaker first needs to immerse the viewer
in the film’s universe through good storytelling, a powerful visual style, and
music. Once sensually and emotionally engaged, the viewer is more likely to
discover the intellectual touchpoints and use them to generate ideas for actions
(Gutiérrez Alea 1988; Shroeder 2016).
   If a film lacks sensuous or emotional touchpoints with the viewer, average
viewers may quickly lose interest and never discover its intellectual touchpoints
[Fig. 1]. European co-productions should ensure they include both types, as they
may attract more viewers and transition them towards discovering cognitive
and intellectual touchpoints that a film offers. Ideally, the interaction with
intellectual touchpoints then converts into critical interventions that viewers
undertake in their personal lives or societies (Mitrić and Sarikakis 2016).
   A meaningful engagement with intellectual touchpoints of many European
co-productions necessitates viewers to embody what Jacques Rancière
terms “the emancipated spectator”, possessing a well-developed ability to
think, communicate, observe, learn, and act in the world (Rancière 2011). The
emancipated spectator can interpret and challenge artworks, recognizing and
resisting ideology through spectating, comparing, and interpreting (Shawyer
2019, 45). However, according to Rancière, becoming an emancipated spectator
seemingly demands a solid education and cultural capital, suggesting that many
“average” spectators may struggle to connect with arthouse films and be their
target audience. The essential problem with European film co-productions is
that both film funds and filmmakers often limit the target audience to Rancière’s
emancipated spectators, neglecting the option of presenting their film stories in
a way that breaks the arthouse niche.




                                                                                     Fig. 1
                                                                                     Touchpoints between a
                                                                                     film and the spectator



Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 41 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X                                                       79
                           The challenge of activating the average spectator was addressed by the theatre
                         practitioner Augusto Boal through his concept of theatre of the oppressed. Boal
                         shifted theatre performances from traditional upper-middle-class venues to
                         locations in favelas, suburbs, and rural areas in his native Brazil, where average
                         spectators could see and afford them. This sparked dialogues through which
                         content-makers, peasants, and workers learned about one another’s lives,
                         establishing a common language for the critical investigation of their social
                         realities. Boal insisted that theatre becomes popular when performances are
                         produced simultaneously for and by the spectator (Coudray 2017). He coined
                         the term “spect-actors” for participant-spectators who act by joining the stage
                         to recreate situations from their oppressive social reality and generate ideas
                         about how to impact them. On stage, spect-actors are guided and moderated
                         by designated professionals (jokers), compensating for the average spectators’
                         lack of theoretical and technical theatrical knowledge and middle-class
                         consecration (Boal 1979).
                           Boal adapted his approach to diverse audiences, tailoring his theatre of the
                         oppressed to individualist First-World contexts where oppression and violence
                         are often covert and symbolic. This resulted in various new forms of his theatre
                         targeting middle-class (emancipated) spectators who suffer from internalized
                         forms of oppression, such as “loneliness”, “fear of emptiness”, and “lack of
                         individual freedom”, leading to depression and physical illness (Babbage 2018,
                         23). This demonstrated that theatre of the oppressed could trigger individual
                         and intimate processes, not only broad social ones. Unfortunately, there is
                         limited knowledge about the extent to which European co-productions may
                         exert this type of intimate impact on their viewers. This is primarily due to the
                         lack of resources for exploring such potential in a film story during the script
                         development stage and undertaking more sophisticated actions to identify and
                         reach target audiences outside festival circuits and arthouse cinema theatres.
                           In line with the aforementioned theatrical notions and practices, we propose
                         four basic types of potential target viewers for European co-productions [Fig. 2].
                         The first type is the average spectator who views films solely as entertainment
                         and escapism. To reach them, a European co-production must ensure a




Fig. 2
The typology of target
audiences for European
co-productions



80                                               Mitrić, Kolarić, Audience Impact of European Co-production
critical number of sensuous and emotional touchpoints, fostering strong self-
identification, a sense of familiarity, empathy, or catharsis within the film’s story-
world.
  The second type of viewer resembles Rancièrian emancipated spectators—
well-educated viewers with high cultural capital and good training in consuming
film as art. They enjoy sensuous and emotional touchpoints with every film, but
their focus is on cognitive and intellectual touchpoints. They a priori expect a
film to help them understand reality better, rather than escape it. They typically
attend film festivals and serve as eloquent ambassadors within the public sphere.
  The third and the most demanding type of viewer mirrors Boal’s spect-actor.
They are former average spectators who, impacted by a film, convert partly
or entirely into active spectators. Boal’s practice, as mentioned above, insists
on exploring the workers’ and peasants’ potential to become spect-actors and
discover the intellectual touchpoints despite their modest education, cultural
capital, and a low appetite for high-culture. The filmmakers can prioritize
researching the potential of average film viewers in a similar way.
  This transformative spect-acting process is not limited to average spectators;
it extends to emancipated spectators as well. It refers to situations where
discerning emancipated spectators detect hidden forms of micro-oppression
and Bourdieuan “symbolic violence” (Milović 2006, 254) thanks to a specific
film. The process in which the emancipated spectator discovers this subtle
oppression and consequently decides to “undertake individual interpretive acts
that offer collective alternative realities” transforms the emancipated spectator
into what Susanne Shawyer calls “the emancipated spect-actor” (Shawyer
2019, 42). Inspired by Shawyer, we use the same term to define the fourth type
of target audience for European co-productions—emancipated spect-actor who
decide to use their knowledge, skills, and networks to practice activism inspired
by eye-opening intellectual touchpoints with a film.
  An ideal European co-production does not have to be a catch-all film that
necessarily attracts all four types of spectators. However, its makers should
have a clear idea about the specific community of target viewers (regardless
of its size), as well as a set of specific actions and techniques for researching
and reaching that community. When a European co-production targets spect-
acting as its audience impact, filmmakers must make an additional effort to
give agency to the pre-established target viewer in the development, post-
production, and exploitation of the film. This agency is achieved when the target
viewer—whether farmers, workers, middle-class individuals, or emancipated
spectators—is treated as an active participant in the process of making and
disseminating a film (e.g., as consultants, co-creators, ambassadors, testers)
rather than an under-researched recipient or an imagined construct.


Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 41 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X                                        81
     WHO DID (NOT) WATCH QUO VADIS, AIDA?
        Applying the audience typology outlined above to Aida, this section explores
     the reasons behind the film’s failure to attract a broader audience despite its
     initial potential. Aida’s classic narrative, Aristotelian dramaturgy, production
     value, dynamic plot, and universal themes, such as family and motherhood,
     promise authentic connections with diverse spectators worldwide. So, why
     has this film, seemingly relevant to many audiences at first glance, not gained
     a wider audience and spurred more social and political actions?4 Below, we
     argue that this is primarily due to how Aida fails to specifically address different
     potential categories of spectators identified—at times in storytelling and at
     times in the film’s promotion.
        Our methodology for analyzing Aida’s reception is constrained due to the
     lack of access to the film’s creative and distribution team, VoD revenues, and a
     larger sample of test audiences. Nevertheless, the data gathered from available
     distribution reports, press clippings, interviews, media debates, and two surveys
     conducted in Spring 2022 among representatives of average and emancipated
     spectators provide sufficient insights to initiate a debate on Aida’s reception
     and, ultimately, whether a European co-production with insufficient audience
     impact should qualify as an ideal European co-production.
        Naturally, the film’s core average spectators are Bosniaks, Bosnia’s Muslim
     community, considering that the Srebrenica genocide is their national lieu du
     mémoire (Nora 1989). The genocide unites Bosniaks around one joint narrative
     about their collective trauma, which at the same time celebrates those who
     dared to confront the ruthless Serbian army as well as condemns the racism
     of Dutch soldiers and impotence of the United Nations. Thus, Žbanić first
     approached the activist and genocide-survivor Hasan Nuhanović to understand
     first-hand what happened in Srebrenica in 1995 and how it affects the survivors
     20 years later. Nuhanović further connected her with other genocide survivors
     who provided authentic insights and audience touchpoints (N1 2019).
        The film ended up not particularly strongly capitalizing on these audiences.
     Conflicts around the script involving Nuhanović likely alienated those who
     felt themselves close to the national narrative that integrates Srebrenica
     as a place of national tragedy, and who expected a film that would endorse
     that kind of narrative, rather than a progressive feminist depiction of events
     which—while certainly not shying away from depicting the perpetrators—does
     so in a manner that is relatively restrained and efficient. Žbanić’s initial choice


     4        This becomes visible when comparing Aida to Žbanić’s debut Grbavica: The
     Land of My Dreams (Grbavica, 2006) about war rape during the war in Bosnia and its
     present-day consequences. The film was credited as helping to push through legal
     changes that helped recognise—and compensate as such—rape victims as civilian vi-
     ctims of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina—an act that could partly be described as a
     consequence of mobilizing the already emancipated spectators into spect-actors, who
     have lobbied for this kind of change.



82                           Mitrić, Kolarić, Audience Impact of European Co-production
to build the film around the memoir of a real-life Potočari base translator
capitalised on this understanding that the film will tell a “genuine” story of
what had happened, offering a form of catharsis to those feeling in some way
affected by the tragedy. But this may have also had a somewhat adverse effect:
in 2019 Nuhanović himself publicly distanced himself from the (then not yet
released) film, explaining in a lengthy Facebook post that the versions of the
script he had read and consulted on departed significantly from his experience
(Nuhanović 2019). There is an undeniable tension here between film as an
artwork, film as a document and film as a means of contributing to a process of
dealing with a difficult past. This tension was recognised by Žbanić, who in her
public appearances simultaneously emphasized the difficulty of dealing with
Srebrenica as “a huge trauma for all Bosnians” (Deblokada 2020, 13) and the
hope that the film would contribute to “understanding, empathy and mutual
solidarity between Muslim and Serb Bosnian nationals” (Radio Slobodna Evropa
2020), while also consistently stressing its status as a work of art, rather than a
depiction of “truth” in some form. In other words, creating an ideal script came
at a cost of alienating not only some prominent local voices for the story, but
also potential “natural” viewers listening to those voices.
   Žbanić has historically rejected the use of her cinema as a tool for building a
sentimental, divided national narrative. Pavičić (2020) rightfully notes that her
films have always been both activist and political and reflective of the nation,
but they do not represent the radically victimisation-focused political narrative
which has dominated the Bosniak public discourse. This makes Žbanić’s film
closer to the critical, active audiences, but has also made it unappealing to
political leadership—which couldn’t have found the film particularly useful for
the national narrative (Higgins 2022). Žbanić’s own public criticism towards
both the ruling and opposition parties in Bosnia, as well as her explicit
acknowledgement (in an interview given to Eve Ensler; NEON 2021) that she
didn’t want to engage in the political conflict over Srebrenica, but for the film
to be “a part of reconciliation” (again stressing its activating potential) certainly
didn’t assist the film in finding its way to these audiences either. Finally, the
feminist narrative does not align easily with the more passive role of women
in not only Bosnian, but also other national narratives in the region. And so,
despite what was deemed a successful domestic opening in the challenging
time of the pandemic (Ljubčić 2020), Aida managed to gain only 11,757 theatre
viewers in the domestic Bosniak market (LUMIERE)—not counting the viewers
reached through national and regional streaming platforms. And as the viewers
weren’t many, even fewer of them were “activated”.
   The average spectators are also among the Dutch people who remember
the responsibility that their government took for the genocide in 1995. Aida
opened a limited public debate in the Netherlands. It was screened in the
side programme Limelights at the (hybrid) 2021 International Film Festival
Rotterdam. The festival page presented the film with a quote by the Dutchbat
commander Thom Karremans, drawing attention to the film’s relevance for the
local context [Fig. 3]. The festival audience award gave it an initial boost with the


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Fig. 3
2021 International Film
Festival Rotterdam page
screenshot, showing
the presentation of Quo
Vadis, Aida? with a quote
by Thom Karremans.




                            local audience, perhaps even beyond the festival-going spectators. It was then
                            screened by the Belgian-Dutch distributor, Cinéart, to the Dutchbat veterans.
                            Following the theatrical release, the national newspaper De Volkskrant ran an
                            interview with Žbanić—and with the veterans themselves, who demanded an
                            additional disclaimer to be added to the film, stating that some events have
                            been fictionalised for creative and dramatic purposes. From their perspective,
                            the film overstates the Serbian zealousness, which is in contrast with the
                            perspective of the survivors, who claim that it is underplayed (Beekman 2021a).
                            The same dialogue reoccurred along similar lines several months later in
                            the same paper (Beekman 2021b), and in a public TV debate on the national
                            broadcasting channel NPO1, which pushed the film into public discourse—as
                            did the fact that its release coincided with a series of events titled Srebrenica is
                            Dutch History. In a culmination of events, the Dutch Minister of Defense Kajsa
                            Ollongren, in her speech delivered when awarding the Dutchbat members the
                            Bronze Medal of Merit for their service in June 2022, referenced one of the
                            veterans’ quotes on the film from the abovementioned talk show: “Your first
                            reaction is to be defensive, because of the past 25 years. But the film is not
                            about Dutchbat. It’s ultimately about the local people there.” All this—including
                            the reframe of the discussion—resulted in just barely over 22,000 cinemagoers
                            in the Netherlands. It shows primarily some limited audience design on part of
                            the distributor, which resulted in modest admissions.
                              Many average spectators around Europe could hear about Aida (and where to
                            watch it) in the mainstream media when the film received the Oscar nomination
                            and the best European Film Award. By opting to present the story through
                            the prism of one tragic heroine, a relatable “woman in the middle” trying to
                            rescue her family (Janjić 2020), the film draws away from the specifically local
                            Srebrenica experience. The strongest weapon in promoting the film to European
                            spectators was its universality. Both the film’s narrative and its press materials
                            emphasized the dramatic nature of Aida’s choice, stressing her universal
                            dilemma and the difficult ambiguity of her choice that can emotionally connect
                            with the ordinary viewer (Deblokada 2020, 7).



84                                                  Mitrić, Kolarić, Audience Impact of European Co-production
   Žbanić was also aware that many target audiences would not be familiar with
Srebrenica. Thus, it was necessary to both make clear what was happening and
tell the story in a way that makes it relevant,5 relying first on emotional and then
intellectual touchpoints: “The film must function for people who don’t know it’s
[sic!] history. […] Aida’s drama and her emotions are the heart of this story. I
want people to take away the feelings and questions the film raises” (Deblokada
2020, 18). The visuals for the film—e.g. the promotional posters all featuring
some version of the main character in doubt (or sometimes, as in the French
edition, in movement), with a stylised image of the crowds of people that the film
singles her from—emphasized this identification through advertising the film
as one about an ordinary woman acting in extraordinary circumstances [Figg.
4 and 5]. Yet a limited number of European spectators saw the film in cinemas
(LUMIERE).




                                                                                            Fig. 4 and Fig. 5
                                                                                            Aida (Jasna Đuričić)
                                                                                            in Quo Vadis, Aida?.
                                                                                            Source: Deblokada




5         In the press kit, Žbanić mentions the test screening with film students of the
Łódź Film School in Poland, many of whom had little or no knowledge of the genocide.
It is, however, not clear how much, if any, of the film was modified as a result of these
screenings (Deblokada 2020).



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        Aida’s emancipated spectators emerged when the film premiered in 2020 at
     the Venice Film Festival and exponentially grew with every new award and
     nomination. The film won only accolades by all relevant critics and many
     emancipated spectators saw the film during its packed festival screenings. In
     the survey we conducted among 40 people from seven EU countries whom
     we identified as emancipated spectators due to their class, cultural capital and
     taste in film, everyone was extremely positive about the film. However, they all
     but one agreed that they would not see Aida more than once. They also were not
     surprised by low cinema admissions across Europe as “the film is too dark” for
     average spectators. Some commented that Aida “lacked an extra million Euro
     to become more audience appealing”. They also concluded that Aida will be one
     of the “evergreen films” that collects audiences cumulatively over generations
     unlike many “one-month-films that become forgotten after one month of their
     audience-hype”.
        Aida’s core spect-actors were obviously in Serbia and the Republic of Srpska
     where the majority of population still deny or relativize the genocide and celebrate
     the war criminals who committed it (see e.g. Stojanović 2021; Stojanović and
     Kajošević 2021). However, the film apparently failed to acknowledge and tackle
     on the textual level the vast difference between the narratives on the Serbian
     and Bosniak side and offer a point of entry to the Serbian average spectator
     who is deeply embedded in the domestic narrative. Aida presents complex
     characters—starting from Aida herself—rejecting the collective martyrdom
     narrative. Yet the film still—even if it tries to give many characters identities
     that go beyond the national/collective, specifically to avoid collective blame and
     guilt and deny the viewer easy identification of “good” and “evil” along national
     lines—deals with a contested national topic in a way that makes the ascription of
     national roles inevitable. And while this is understandable—after all, genocide is
     a crime specifically targeting individuals due to their group membership—in the
     context of a strong narrative clash, it makes the activation of average spectators
     extremely difficult. Moreover, as the film’s narrative is a fictionalised version
     of historical events, every departure from factuality of what had happened
     becomes an opportunity to question the narrative altogether as fraudulent and
     biased. This happens mainly because of the political context in which the film is
     being interpreted. On the one hand, widespread genocide relativization allows
     the media and political figures, including convicted war criminals, to contest the
     events that took place—a narrative that is supported by the political structures.
     Moreover, the insistence on collectivisation (rather than individualisation) of
     the crime continuously enables equalisation between the nation and the crime,
     thus making any mention of the crime an attack on the whole nation, something
     Žbanić is aware of and stands firmly against (Higgins 2022).
        On the flip side, while the director’s evident intention was to mobilize potential
     viewers, her effort to grapple with the relativization and control of the media
     discourse on Srebrenica by the Serbian government, leading to a public conflict
     with the Serbian public broadcaster RTS over the films screening, likely did
     not contribute to altering entrenched attitudes. Žbanić’s public insistence



86                           Mitrić, Kolarić, Audience Impact of European Co-production
that the film was not being shown on RTS due to political pressure (a claim
refuted by a press release from RTS described as “made up”) (RTS 2022), and
her assertion that “symbolically, the war will be over once the public service
RTS stops being in the service of war-mongering propaganda” (N1 2022), can
easily be co-opted by political discourse emphasizing a clear and collective “us-
them” distinction. This is facilitated by simplistic media framing that selectively
distorts information, often in service of the ruling elites (Sejdinović 2022). The
ensuing public discussion, with predictable positions, resulted in entrenching
rather than shifting perspectives.
   While writing this article, we struggled to trace any cases of obvious spect-
acting process among the average spectators in Serbia and Republic of Srpska.
There is, for example, no record of teachers showing the film to their students,
local television showing Aida despite all odds, or viral social media posts
showing that the film made some Serbian average spectators reconsider their
denial of the Srebrenica genocide. At the same time, there is a lot of evidence of
people who either refused to watch a film or watched it only to discredit it. They
found no touchpoints with Aida whatsoever.
   Yet, we still do not know how many Serbian people (il)legally streamed the
film and started a discrete spect-acting process, in the privacy of their rooms,
towards questioning their denial. The scope and resources of our research are
too limited to discover and track these intimate processes. However, in April
2022, we tested it on a sample of seven Serbian viewers from Serbia and the
Republic of Srpska whom we identified as average spectators based on their
education, class, media habits and cultural capital. Asked to watch Aida, they
gave us three kinds of responses. Two respondents refused straight away to
watch the film dismissing it as anti-Serbian propaganda. Four of them saw it,
but their feedback was based only on shaming Žbanić for conscious ignoring of
“the genocide that the Srebrenica Muslims had committed against the Serbs in
1993 before the Serbs took revenge in self-defence in 1995”. One respondent
watched the film but refrained from giving any feedback. We can only guess if
their silence signalled some kind of discrete spect-acting process.
   There are two possibilities for why Aida did not trigger a trackable spect-
acting process among the average spectators in Serbia and the Republic of
Srpska. The first is obviously external to the film and linked to extreme political
pressures from the genocide-denying Serbian mainstream elite. Due to this
pressure, Žbanić could not obtain the permit from the local Serbian authorities
to shoot in Srebrenica. No distributor in Serbia or the Republic of Srpska
dared to buy the film, while the headlines of the Serbian mainstream media
massively dismissed the film as blatant anti-Serbian propaganda. It culminated
with the aforementioned open conflict between Žbanić and the Serbian public
service broadcaster when RTS refused to show Aida even after the Serbian
actress Jasna Đuričić, who plays Aida, won the best European actress award
in December 2021. Finally, the premiere of Aida coincided (accidentally or not)
with the premiere of the Serbian national epic Dara of Jasenovac (Predrag
Antonijević, 2021), which depicts the mass killings of Serbian civilians in the


Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 41 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X                                     87
                         Croatian concentration camps during WWII from the perspective of the little
                         girl Dara [Fig. 6]. Dara easily created emotional touchpoints with the Serbian
                         average spectators and likely distanced them even more from reflecting upon
                         the crimes that Serbs committed. All this created a thick wall around Serbian
                         average spectators that could have simply become impenetrable for the
                         thought-provoking Aida.
                           Another reason for low spect-acting in Serbia could originate from Aida’s team.
                         Žbanić used time and resources to talk to the genocide survivors. She even
                         tried to co-write the script with one of them to facilitate more touchpoints with
                         Bosniak average spectators. Likewise, she talked to Dutch soldiers who were
                         in Srebrenica in 1995. In one interview (Kožul 2020) she acknowledged how the
                         time she spent with them made her less angry with them as she realized that
                         most of them were only 18 in 1995 and Srebrenica was their first stationing
                         abroad. She translated this into the film by humanizing young Dutch soldiers,
                         increasing the number of touchpoints between the film and Dutch (or West
                         European) average spectators. However, there is little evidence that Žbanić
                         and her team tried to research the hearts and brains of the average Serbian
                         spectators who live in media darkness, were too young when the genocide
                         happened, or have been raised and schooled by genocide deniers. Thus, we do
                         not know if time spent with them would have generated fresh ideas about their
                         touchpoints with a film about Srebrenica.
                           A tiny segment of emancipated spectators in Serbia turned into emancipated
Fig. 6                   spect-actors when they decided to use their resources to motivate average
Dara of Jasenovac.
                         Serbian spectators to watch Aida. This included a petition by the Belgrade-
Source: Cineuropa (via
Film danas production)   based Regional Academy for Academic Development to screen the film on




88                                              Mitrić, Kolarić, Audience Impact of European Co-production
Serbian public broadcaster (ADD 2021). Few accomplished actors, filmmakers,
former parliamentarians, and NGO directors advocated in public interviews for
the film to be acknowledged rather than ignored, and a dialogue with Žbanić
arranged. Yet all these initiatives spoke only to emancipated spectators, rather
than activated the average ones. Only four screenings of Aida were eventually
arranged in Serbia: in Novi Pazar, the centre of Serbia’s Bosniak community,
Novi Sad as part of the Autonomous Festival of Women, and in Belgrade for
journalists (see Sejdinović 2022). These screenings, as important as they were,
have likely reached an already knowledgeable or at the very least interested
audience of emancipated spectators.
  Finally, the authors of this article who grew up in Croatia and Serbia
respectively during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, being exposed to anti-
Bosniak propaganda, consider this article as their own act of (emancipated)
spect-acting, which was inspired by Aida.



CONCLUSION
   The most ambitious European films, aiming for both international audiences
and critical acclaim, are typically co-productions. However, they frequently
fail to appeal to a wider audience. In this study, we asked the question: why
do European co-productions, and in particular those we label as “ideal”—films
of high artistic value with festival visibility, an “ideal script” and clear socio-
cultural and political value—fail at reaching their target audiences? Moving
beyond the typical justifications such as cultural specificities, arthouse style,
and high-brow ideology, we hone in on a perspective centered on audience
design: the inability to, even when target audiences are accurately identified,
develop and subsequently promote films in a manner that resonates with those
audiences during the distribution process.
   To demonstrate this, we developed a model for analysing the audience impact
of European co-productions. We identified four types of target-audiences for
European co-productions: average spectators, emancipated spectators,
spect-actors and emancipated spect-actors. We then used Quo Vadis, Aida?
as a representative and generalizable case study to demonstrate how and
where the process of targeting different audience groups for the film failed.
Our analysis showed that, despite the director’s conscious intention to target
specific audience groups to achieve identified societal impacts, a lack of strategy
at both the textual and promotional levels, particularly noteworthy given the
intricate socio-political context surrounding the film’s production, distribution,
and reception, frequently hindered its reach to the intended audiences.
   Our analysis, however, was severely limited by the lack of access to the film’s
creative and distribution team, and by the lack of data to draw on. Information
on VoD viewership remains unavailable, audience practices with regard to
illegal film streaming under-researched. Our study thus points to the need
for European filmmakers to devote more resources to researching the target



Cinéma & Cie vol. 23 no. 41 2023 · ISSN 2036-461X                                     89
     audiences and creating genuine touchpoints with them even during script
     development (for which they need additional financial and professional help of
     European film funds and distributors), as well as for more dedicated academic
     efforts to both theorise and empirically research film audiences’ engagement
     with European films.




90                         Mitrić, Kolarić, Audience Impact of European Co-production
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