Daily Inspiration Quote by Jasmila Žbanić

Žbanić’s line lands like a closed door: not a moral suggestion, a logistical fact. “As long as” sets a condition, the way a ceasefire sets terms. She isn’t romanticizing truth; she’s describing it as infrastructure. Without it, “move on” isn’t growth, it’s choreography - a society performing normalcy while the floorboards still creak with what’s been buried.

The double demand - “recognized and accepted” - is the tell. Recognition is public: naming the harm, admitting it happened, locating responsibility. Acceptance is private and political: living with the implications, compensating for them, reordering the story you tell about yourself. Many countries are willing to do the first in ceremonies and speeches; the second is where the real resistance starts, because acceptance costs status, myths, and sometimes freedom.

Coming from a director, the phrasing carries an aesthetic critique, too. Žbanić has built films in the shadow of Bosnian war trauma, where the “move on” impulse often functions as a pressure campaign: don’t disturb the peace, don’t reopen wounds, don’t complicate the national narrative. Her sentence refuses that shortcut. It suggests that denial isn’t just unethical; it’s narratively unstable. The plot won’t advance because the central event has been edited out.

There’s a quiet warning embedded in the plainness: time does not heal what isn’t acknowledged. It only layers new scenes on top of an unresolved script, until the past breaks through as rage, revisionism, or repetition.