No Man’s Land is a film about the conflict between the Bosnians and the Serbs.  It won the Academy Award for the best foreign film, and the award for the best screenplay at Cannes in 2001.  It presents a fiendishly complex moral situation, and it shows how a degree of trust between enemies can be eroded by difficult circumstances  -- circumstances which are bizarre in the extreme.

A Bosnian and a Serb are stranded in a trench between the enemy lines, along with a soldier who has been wounded and is lying on a spring-loaded bomb, which will explode if he moves.  A French UN peacekeeper is moved to intervene, hoping to save three lives.  A British journalist finds out what he is doing, and so adds the attention of the world’s media to a very delicate situation.  Then the local UN commander, a British general, works out a makeshift solution to the problem.

The interest of the film for our course lies in its depiction of a situation in which the line between good and evil is blurred almost to the point of non-existence.  By what standards might one judge the actions of the characters in this film?  Is a good action good in itself, despite the outcome, or does ethical value depend on the consequences of the action taken?  The film is also relevant to anyone who might become part of a peacekeeping operation.