A National Film Board of Canada production

Welcome to a place where the houses have holes, tomatoes are ticking time bombs and snails wander the streets in search of a safe space. In Paradaïz, Sarajevo-born artist Matea Radic uses absurdist animation, archival images and her own slippery childhood memories to explore the real meaning of home.

Welcome to a place filled with houseless slugs, bullet-ridden walls, never-ending cigarettes and exploding tomatoes. This must be Paradaïz.

Buckle up. We have begun our descent into Paradaïz.

Welcome to a place where the houses have holes, tomatoes are ticking time bombs and snails wander the streets in search of a safe space. In her short-film debut, Winnipeg-based artist Matea Radic uses hand-drawn animation, family photos, a wry sense of humour and her own slippery memories to return to the war-torn city of Sarajevo she fled as a child in the ’90s. There, in between chain-smoking cigarettes and watching old absurdist TV commercials, her heroine explores the home she left—or what’s left of it. Along the way, she subverts expectations about what healing looks like, engaging in a surreal game of hide-and-seek with her surroundings.

I was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1985. I was an adventurous child, creative and independent. Obsessed with Mr. Bean and digging for treasures. I was a normal kid with a nice life. But in 1992, the siege of Sarajevo began and my whole world turned upside down. I was six years old. We fled our top-story apartment to my grandpa Marijan’s home, and not a minute too soon because the following day a bomb fell through the ceiling of our building.

My dad put mattresses up against the windows at Marijan’s to prevent them from being smashed and shrapnel from flying in. My cousin Veronika would come over and we would make couch forts; she’d teach me how to make paper cigarettes that looked exactly like real cigarettes. We would pretend to stress-smoke like everyone else.

A few months into the war, my mom and I escaped on the last bus taking women and children out of the city, leaving my dad behind. We arrived in Croatia and waited for paperwork that would allow us to come to Canada. Shortly after my seventh birthday, we landed in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

As a young kid in a new country, being around people I didn’t know or understand, my main goal became to fit in, and so I became a chameleon. I studied my fellow classmates so I could mirror them. I resented being different. I felt dirty for having come from somewhere littered with death and destruction. A place so scary that it was featured on the news every night. I just wanted to be a normal kid again, so I avoided telling people where I was from. I left my old self back in Sarajevo.

Twenty-five years after fleeing the war, I decided it was time to go back to visit Sarajevo. Through the plane window, I watched the hills roll by as we approached the city. I wondered to myself what I would do if it all happened again. I imagined pulling up the hill and hiding beneath the blanket of grass. This was the image that sparked the story for this film.

Paradaïz is the journey of returning back to my younger self and setting her free. Of unearthing old wounds to let them heal. And through the process of writing and animating this film, I did just that. I learned that home is when you recognize yourself—and that no matter how well you’ve hidden yourself, you can always reemerge.

Matea Radic

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