Growing up in Montreal in a Bosnian household, Stefan Pavlovic yearned to connect with his family origins, a longing entwined with political upheaval and displacement. Travelling to Orah, a small village in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the film-maker strikes a rapport with Zdravko, a solitary fisherman similarly unmoored in the sea of history. Taking the form of a visual pilgrimage, Pavlovic’s poetic documentary shifts between the scenic tranquility of the location and brutal anecdotes to reveal the open wounds of the past.

Here, the words carry as much thematic weight as the images. Spoken in Bosnian, the subtitles of Pavlovic’s conversations with Zdravko serve as an extension of the film-maker’s inner thoughts. When the older man uses phrases that are unfamiliar to Pavlovic, the captions cease to translate, opting instead to express the latter’s incomprehension. Accompanied by expressionistic shots of the landscape, Pavlovic’s reading of his internal monologues and recollections is conceived with a similar subjectivity; when he stumbles over certain syllables, the onscreen text as well as the images flash and flicker. These metatextual glitches offer a profound echo of Pavlovic’s fragmented relationship with his family’s native language. The gap that stands between him and his heritage is not only geographical and historical, but also linguistic.

Similar ruptures are to be found in the fisherman’s life as well. Having lost his eye and some of his hearing as a soldier during the Bosnian war, he remains traumatised and unable to adjust to civilian life. Zdravko’s self-imposed exile in an abandoned church reflects the incommunicable and alienating nature of PTSD. But even when language fails in the face of psychological turmoil and disconnect, moments of intimacy and care between the two men beautifully convey an understanding that is beyond words.

• Looking for Horses is available from 1 December on True Story.