This article tackles the construction of cultural memory in visual media through Jasmila Žbanić’s globally-awarded film Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020). Similar to previous attempts at memorialisation transcending to social media – such as the #ŠtoTeNema movement on X (Jaugaitė 2024, Memory, Mind & Media 3, 1–22) – Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020) evinces the moral complexities faced by Aida, an English teacher credited as a translator for the United Nations (UN) Blue Helmets, as she grapples with her desire to save her family and neighbours, and her duty as an interpreter. Focusing on the daily trials of Srebrenica citizens before and after the 12 July massacre, Žbanić’s production succeeds as an alternative commemorative practice exhibiting the complexities encountered by Bosniak civilians (Mulaj, 2017, Crime, Law and Social Change 68, 123–143). Žbanić centres the victims’ perspective by casting Bosnian actors and placing a Bosniak female witness as the main character (Milišić, 2021, Društvene i humanističke studije 4, 207–224). Employing social justice frameworks (Misztal, 2003, Theories of Social Remembering, Open University Press), the film demands responsibility and acknowledgement of the international community’s failures in protecting civilians. Žbanić’s portrayal of the UN Blue Helmets, through Aida’s eyes, highlights how unrecognised accountability impedes victims’ identity reconstruction and shared cultural memory (Assmann, 2011, Communicative and Cultural Memory. In Knowledge and Space, Springer Netherlands, pp. 15–27). Through visual and contextual analysis, the film challenges the silencing and denial of Bosniak suffering, countering dominant discourses promoted by Serbian authorities. The article concludes by allegorising Aida’s narrative as a shared global experience for survivors of ethnic cleansing, raising awareness of the moral implications of war and displacement.

The article attempts to clarify what today constitutes communicative remembering. To revisit this basic mnemonic concept, our theoretical contribution starts from available approaches in social memory studies that assume a binary distinction between cultural and communicative modes of memory making. In contrast, we use concepts that treat them not as structural, historically and culturally distinct registers but as a repertoire of retrospection that hinges on the evoked temporal horizon and media usage. To further interrogate this practical articulation of memories, we direct our attention to the habitual, communicatively realised engagement with the past. We finally turn to the ways communicative remembering is done in digitally networked environments, which provide us with a pertinent mnemonic arena where rigid dichotomies of communicative memory versus cultural memory are eroded.