Bigger than Trauma

When the past still weighs heavy, what would you do?

Twenty-five years after the war for Croatian Independence, many women survivors remain unhealed. The judicial system is slow, legal proceedings are exhausting, and institutional support too often amounts to sedatives and silence. The suffering of civilian women victims has remained largely invisible in a society that still centers its war memory on male veterans and soldiers.

Bigger than Trauma follows four women from Vukovar who were among the thousands whose lives were irrevocably changed by wartime violence. Over the course of three years, the camera accompanies Katica, Ana, Marija, and other participants as they enter a groundbreaking program that invites Croatian and Serbian women to pursue personal, profound, and transformative therapy together.

Through this collective process of empowerment, each woman revisits her story and begins to reimagine her future. The healing is neither linear nor easy, but the journey shifts relationships, dissolves long-held silences, and opens paths toward a life no longer defined by the past. The film stands as a testament to the resilience of women who chose to face their trauma rather than bury it, and to the possibility of rebuilding joy from the ruins of suffering.