Das Fraulein (2007) — Switzerland

The Swiss director Andrea Staka (b. 1973) explores the power of place through the lives of three women living in Zurich in her film that has won several awards. The three women would seem to have very little in common except their motherland. Ruza is a Serbian who left Belgrade twenty-five years ago by choice. She had it good, but wanted better. She succeeded by opening a small cafeteria in Zurich, but inwardly she is more dour than the Swiss weather. Her employee Mila is a Croatian who wants to return to the motherland when she retires, but is deeply ambivalent because her children have settled in Switzerland. Into their boring cafeteria lives enters Ana, a twenty-two year old Bosnian from war-torn Sarajevo who epitomizes joie de vivre despite her own secrets that would make you guess otherwise. How these women relate to each other, and the choices they make about what used to be Yugoslavia, drive the plot of this film. In German, Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian, with English sub-titles.