A Bosnian woman has agreed to meet the son she bore as the result of wartime rape after having read of a film made about the now 22-year-old man and his search for his biological parents.
Film director Semsudin Gegic said the woman, a Muslim Bosniak who lives in the US, had called him after she saw an about the premiere of Gegic's film in Bosnia.
"This has taken me by such surprise," Gegic said. "She called me from the US and said she was ready to meet Alen and agreed I can film their encounter."
Alen Muhic's mother was repeatedly raped by a Bosnian Serb soldier early in Bosnia's 1992-95 war, and gave birth to a boy she abandoned. She testified as a protected witness at a trial and her name cannot be published.
Gegic's second documentary film about Muhic, An Invisible Child's Trap, documents his painful bid to track down and meet his parents, a quest that had ultimately proved fruitless.
The film confronts the stigma still surrounding Bosnians born of wartime rape, a war crime that up to 30,000 women are believed to have been subjected to during the Bosnian war.
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