Title: Sarajevo Safari
Genre:
War Thriller / Historical Drama
Logline:
During the siege of Sarajevo, a lone Mossad sniper is secretly inserted into the city to protect its Jewish community after intelligence reveals foreign mercenaries are paying to hunt civilians for sport—turning genocide into a grotesque game.
Setting:
Sarajevo, Bosnia, 1993.
A once-cosmopolitan city reduced to rubble, where snipers rule the hills, breadlines are death traps, and survival depends on silence, speed, and luck.
Protagonist:
Joseph Christian Jukic as Ariel Ben-Yosef (codename: Shomer — “Guardian”)
A veteran Mossad sniper with Balkan roots and a haunted past. Ariel is disciplined, restrained, and deeply moral—trained to kill, but committed to preserving life. His connection to Sarajevo’s Jewish community is both professional and personal: this is one of the last intact Jewish enclaves in Europe, and history has taught him what happens when the world looks away.
Antagonists:
An informal network of foreign thrill-seekers, war tourists, and rogue mercenaries—wealthy men who pay local militias and criminal middlemen for the chance to “hunt” Jews and other civilians during the chaos of the siege.
They call it “Sarajevo Safari.”
They keep score.
These men are not ideologues—they are worse. They are bored, entitled, and insulated from consequence.
Story Treatment:
ACT I – THE HUNT
As Sarajevo starves under siege, Mossad intercepts disturbing intelligence: encrypted communications and intercepted photographs revealing wealthy foreigners boasting about “clean kills” and “moving targets.” The targets are Jewish civilians—easily identifiable through community routes, synagogues, aid lines, and old family registries.
Ariel Ben-Yosef is dispatched quietly. No official presence. No extraction guarantee.
Upon entering Sarajevo through underground tunnels and smuggler routes, Ariel witnesses the city’s daily terror: mothers sprinting across intersections, children learning the sound of incoming fire, the dead left where they fall. He makes contact with a small Jewish council sheltering families in basements and abandoned buildings.
They do not ask him to fight.
They ask him to stay.
ACT II – THE GUARDIAN
Ariel begins counter-sniper operations—not for territory, but for people.
He studies patterns: sniper nests timed to prayer routes, food deliveries ambushed for sport, shots taken not for strategy but spectacle. Ariel realizes these hunters don’t care about sides in the war—they care about trophies.
One by one, Ariel neutralizes the hunters with surgical precision. No bravado. No celebration. Each kill weighs on him. Between missions, he helps families move at night, trains civilians how to disappear into the city, and listens to stories of a Sarajevo that once believed it had escaped Europe’s darkest instincts.
The hunters notice.
They begin hunting him.
ACT III – THE COUNTER-SAFARI
The foreign hunters escalate, turning the game into a personal challenge. They broadcast taunts over illicit radio frequencies. They raise the bounty. They want the “ghost sniper.”
As winter sets in, Ariel is wounded but refuses evacuation. The Jewish community prepares for forced evacuation—something history has taught them never to trust.
In a final night-long confrontation across rooftops, cemeteries, and burned-out apartment blocks, Ariel turns the city itself into a weapon. He outthinks, outwaits, and outlasts the hunters—exposing their names, methods, and sponsors through leaked intelligence sent to international media.
By morning, the hunters are dead, fled, or exposed.
The “safari” is over.
Final Image:
Ariel watches dawn break over Sarajevo. The city still burns. The war is not over. But children walk one street without running.
Ariel disappears back into the shadows, leaving behind no medal, no record—only lives saved.
A title card appears:
“During the siege of Sarajevo, over 10,000 civilians were killed.
Many crimes were never recorded.
Some were stopped by people who were never meant to exist.”
Themes:
- The banality of evil versus the discipline of conscience
- Genocide as entertainment in the age of wealth and distance
- Moral responsibility when the world refuses to intervene
- Memory, survival, and the cost of protection
Tone & Style:
- Gritty realism, restrained violence
- Sniper sequences shot with silence and tension rather than spectacle
- Influences: Enemy at the Gates, Munich, The Pianist, Sicario
- No glorification of war—only survival and resistance
INT. OLD SYNAGOGUE, SARAJEVO – NIGHT
Candlelight trembles against cracked stone walls. The distant THUD of artillery rolls like a bad memory that won’t sleep.
The HEAD RABBI OF SARAJEVO (late 60s), gentle eyes hardened by history, finishes binding a wounded CHILD’S arm. He looks up.
JOSEPH CHRISTIAN JUKIC (40s), pale, limping, his breath shallow, stands in the doorway. Blood seeps through his jacket.
RABBI
(quiet, firm)
Sit. You’ll fall.
Joseph obeys. As he lowers himself, a sharp wince escapes him. The Rabbi kneels, begins to undo the jacket.
RABBI (CONT’D)
Shrapnel?
JOSEPH
Mortar. Sniper bait.
(smiles faintly)
I zigged when I should’ve zagged.
The Rabbi opens the jacket. Beneath it—an ISRAELI DEFENCE FORCES SHIRT, torn and soaked dark with blood.
The Rabbi freezes.
Silence presses in, broken only by Joseph’s breathing.
RABBI
(soft, disbelieving)
This city has seen many uniforms.
(pauses)
Few come here by choice.
Joseph slowly pulls the shirt higher, revealing a jagged wound near his ribs. Blood glistens fresh.
JOSEPH
I didn’t come for the war.
I came for the people the war forgot.
The Rabbi’s hands tremble as he touches the edge of the fabric—not the wound.
RABBI
You wear this… openly?
JOSEPH
I wear it honestly.
The Rabbi looks into Joseph’s eyes now. Measures him.
RABBI
You know what this will cost you.
JOSEPH
I know what it costs if I don’t.
A BOOM outside rattles the windows. Dust falls like ash.
The Rabbi tears a strip of cloth, presses it to the wound with practiced care.
RABBI
When I was a boy, my father hid a star under his coat.
(beat)
Tonight, you show yours soaked in blood.
JOSEPH
Stars are easy to wear when they shine.
Harder when they’re targets.
The Rabbi tightens the bandage.
RABBI
Why Sarajevo?
Joseph exhales, pain flashing.
JOSEPH
Because someone decided Jews were game animals.
Paid admission. Front-row seats.
(snaps a look)
I don’t hunt. I stop hunts.
The Rabbi finishes the bandage. He sits back, eyes wet but unblinking.
RABBI
You are wounded.
JOSEPH
So is the city.
A long beat.
The Rabbi stands, places his hand on Joseph’s shoulder—blessing, gratitude, burden all at once.
RABBI
Then you will rest here.
And when you rise…
(quiet steel)
You will not rise alone.
Joseph nods, overcome.
Outside, a sniper’s rifle cracks. Inside, the candles keep burning.
FADE OUT.
Scene: “Safe Passage”
The ruins of Sarajevo breathe in the cold dusk.
A burned-out library stands like a cathedral of ash. Snow settles softly on shattered stone. Joe Jukic emerges from the shadows—not hunting, not hiding—his rifle slung, not raised. The Ghost Sniper only by reputation.
From the opposite end of the square, men step forward—mujahideen escorts, careful, disciplined. They stop well short. One of them speaks quietly.
ESCORT
He will meet you alone.
Joe nods once.
From between the columns steps Osama bin Laden, robed simply, eyes sharp, posture rigid with self-importance—but also calculation. He raises his hand. No weapons are drawn.
For a moment, the city itself seems to listen.
BIN LADEN
Joseph Jukic.
They say you walk Sarajevo unseen.
That men die without knowing who judged them.
Joe’s voice is calm, worn by smoke and winter.
JOE
They also say lies travel faster than bullets.
Bin Laden studies him, then smiles thinly.
BIN LADEN
Yes.
I have heard… stories.
That this war has become a hunt.
That men place values on lives, as if God were an auctioneer.
Joe steps closer, eyes hard.
JOE
Anyone who hunts civilians isn’t a soldier.
Doesn’t matter what God they claim.
A beat.
Bin Laden inclines his head slightly—a Saladin-like acknowledgment, not submission.
BIN LADEN
Then we agree on something rare.
Those who slaughter the helpless shame their cause.
They shame all causes.
The wind cuts through the square.
BIN LADEN (CONT’D)
You are not one of the Serbian men who shell marketplaces and call it war.
You are Joseph Jukic.
And I am Osama bin Laden—
not a thief in the night, not a drunk with artillery.
Joe’s jaw tightens.
JOE
Names don’t cleanse blood.
Bin Laden accepts the rebuke.
BIN LADEN
No.
But conduct may yet preserve honor.
He gestures toward the ruined streets.
BIN LADEN (CONT’D)
Your people—Jews, Catholics, Muslims—
they will pass through this city unharmed.
My word stands against any man who would raise a hand to them.
Joe studies him, searching for the crack.
JOE
Why?
Bin Laden answers without hesitation.
BIN LADEN
Because even in war, there must be lines.
Saladin understood this.
Those who forget it win battles—and lose history.
A long silence.
Joe nods once.
JOE
If your word breaks—
BIN LADEN
—then may history judge me as it judges the butchers.
They hold each other’s gaze. No handshake. No friendship.
Only a grim contract between enemies who refuse to become monsters.
Joe turns and fades back into the snow.
Bin Laden watches him go, then speaks softly—to the city, not the man.
BIN LADEN
Jerusalem was taken and lost many times.
But mercy…
mercy is remembered forever.
The wind carries the words into the ruins.
CUT TO BLACK.