Bosnia-Herzegovina has selected Alen Drljevic’s Men Don’t Cry (Muskarci koji ne placu) as the country’s official entry in the Foreign Language Film category of the 90th Academy Awards.

Men Don’t Cry, which won the Special Jury Prize at the 2017 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival last month,  tells the story of a group therapy workshop, set in a hotel in the Bosnian mountains. A group of war-scarred veterans from different sides in the Yugoslavian conflict are brought together by a peace group to share their wartime experiences, and to try to establish a degree of trust and faith between them. Emotions are highly charged as old enmities and hostilities emerge, but the participants gradually learn to overcome their divisions and achieve a kind of understanding and respect for each other, or at least a tolerance, despite all the bloodshed that has flowed between them in the past.

The film features an all-star team of Balkan actors including Croatia’s Leon Lučev (The Black Pin, Circles) and Ivo Gregurević (Ungiven, The Reaper), Serbia’s Boris Isaković (Requiem for Mrs. J., A Good Wife), Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Emir Hadžihafizbegović (These Are the Rules, Death of a Man in the Balkans), Boris Ler (Circus Columbia) and Ermin Bravo (Love Island), as well as Slovenia’s Sebastian Cavazza (Nika, On the Path).