At first reluctant, U2 accepted their role in using music and art to highlight Sarajevo’s tenacity.
Matt Damon revealed specifics of how Irish rock group U2 was involved in the Bosnian war documentary “Kiss the Future.”
In their documentary Kiss the Future, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck explore Sarajevo’s tenacity during the Bosnian War and the vibrant cultural community that arose in the middle of the carnage.
Co-producer of the movie with Affleck, Damon said that the band was first apprehensive to lend their name to the endeavor.
“I went to them right away and told them about this project and asked if they’d participate and they were reluctant at first,” Damon told People magazine. “And I discovered why when I spoke with them: they didn’t want the film to be about them. ‘We don’t want to be centered in this story,’ they said.”
U2 was reassured by Damon and director Nenad Cicin-Sain that the film would center on “these incredible Sarajevan people and their relationship to U2’s music.”
“Kiss the Future” chronicles Sarajevan’s life under the siege and how American humanitarian Bill Carter teamed up with U2 to spread awareness of the situation throughout the world.
After the war ended, U2 eventually gave a concert in Sarajevo in 1997, motivated by the way Sarajevans turned to the band’s music for comfort.
“These incredible people who were risking their lives to go listen to music or to play music in the middle of the siege,” said Damon, underscoring the documentary’s focus on “the role of art as an act of resistance in the world and in people’s lives.”
With origins in the former Yugoslavia, director Cicin-Sain was moved to write “Kiss the Future” after seeing a 2017 concert in Sarajevo commemorating the 20th anniversary of U2’s 1996 performance.
“I thought of the concert as a means of sharing what happened in my country,” he said.