Light in darkness

Light in Darkness takes us to Sarajevo in autumn 1998, where we meet the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra, which has existed for more than seventy years despite ethnic divisions. Members of the orchestra talk about the horrors of the civil war and the way they all found hope and survival through music. Common to all their accounts is their passion for playing music to brighten the lives of the war-ravaged inhabitants of Sarajevo; their desire to play whatever the cost - even though their rehearsal hall was a bomb target and they had to run the gauntlet of snipers to and from rehearsals. The film is based on an idea of photographer Marianne Grøndahl, whose black and white stills of the musicians and Sarajevo in ruins are combined with moving images and interviews.