How many of us who have been in counseling or therapy have had to talk about watching our loved ones tortured and killed or having to identify our dead spouse's skeleton? Makes the trauma of a messy divorce, or bullying in the office, seem pretty tame, huh?

Jasmina Dedic, Senada-Hajrija Mumic and Sedina Salcinovic are Bosnian women who lost their husbands and other male family members between 1992 and 1995 when the Serb Chetniks were destroying lives and creating terror. In Tuzla, 15 such women leave their refugee camps annually and spend a year at the Vive Zene Psychotherapy Centre trying to come to terms with their pain. In this poignant documentary, Paris-born Laurent Becue-Renard, follows Jasmina, Sedina and Senada through this agonising process.

The camera is there during the talks with Fika Ibrahimefendic, the psychotherapist, who originally invited Becue-Renard to sit in on a session while he was running the Sarajevo Online internet site. The camera is there during the physical therapy with body therapist Fatima Babic. The camera is there when the women talk during coffee breaks. The camera is there when the women finally return to Srebrenica and inspect the remains of their homes. In short, Becue-Renard takes a background role and all we are given of the passage of time are the words in text for the different seasons.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film is the different coping mechanisms the women have adopted. In a society which is not likely to encourage self-expression the way we do in the West, none of the three have talked much about their experiences until now. One of them feels she can never forgive the Serbs and her anger has manifested itself in beating her children. As the remains of her husband have never been found, she is also nursing an irrational hope that he is still alive. Another regrets the way she parted from her husband for what would be the last time and is uncomfortable that the mutilated body parts of her dead brother remind her of joints of meat. The third is haunted by the sight of her husband as a skeleton and distraught that she cannot remember whether he was wearing a leather jacket or not. The simple act of talking about what they have seen gives them renewed strength and the film closes on a hopeful note.

There is a noticeable lack of rape experiences in the women's stories and one wonders if this area of their trauma, should they have been victims of such horrors, proved too much for them to talk about. As with all documentaries of this nature, the watcher is left wondering what became of each of the women when they left the centre. A few lines of text on this subject would have been a welcome addition at the end.

Despite these minor shortfalls, the film is a brave first feature dealing with the human side of a terrible war. It won the Peace Film Award at the 51st Berlin International Film Festival.