Mersiha Husagic was born in 1989 in former Yugoslavia. In September 1992, she left her home country with her mother because of the war, meeting her father in Hamburg where he had previously fled due to political persecution. Here, they first lived as refugees in an asylum house, then with a German family under one roof. As a child, Mersiha loved films, and by the time she was in high school she was already acting in German film and television productions, later attending acting school in Hamburg and since working as an actress in film and television. In 2015, she enrolled in The University of Art in Hamburg with Professor Wim Wenders, directing several short films and a documentary before graduating in 2020. “Cherry Juice” is her first feature film.

What does war leave behind? And how does one deal with war in the world to begin with? Through my personal experience with the Bosnian War, these questions drive me: I remember the sounds of bombs, my parents living in fear, the soldiers in our apartment searching for my father. When I asked my mother what the war left behind, she responded “an empty soul”. I have never forgotten this sentence. But our family was very lucky that we survived—many people didn’t—and the ongoing war in Ukraine, where some refugees will be luckier than others, takes me back to my own experiences as a child. As a filmmaker I want to engage with these universal questions of life, by exploring the human soul in a world where beauty and war are intertwined.