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BIRN’s War Movie Presented at Bosnia’s Prestigious Film Festival

18. August 2015.00:00
Documentary made by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, looking into some of the most brutal crimes of the Kosovo war, had its international premiere at this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival.

This post is also available in: Bosnian

Documentary made by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, looking into some of the most brutal crimes of the Kosovo war, had its international premiere at this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival.

The latest BIRN documentary ‘The Unidentified’, which names Serbian officers who ordered attacks on Kosovo villages around the town of Pec/Peja in 1999, as well as those involved in the cover-up operation to hide the victims’ bodies, had its international debut on Tuesday as a part of the official program of the Sarajevo Film Festival.

The documentary is a result of a two-year long investigation. It takes viewers back to 1999, to the villages of Ljubenic, Cuska, Pavljan and Zahac near Pec/Peja in Kosovo, where Serbian fighters killed more than 118 Albanian civilians. Their bodies were either burned or removed, and some of them were later found in mass graves at the Batajnica police training centre near Belgrade in 2001.

The trial of 11 fighters alleged to have been involved in the killings – 10 of them accused of being direct perpetrators – is still ongoing in Belgrade. In February 2014, nine of them were sentenced to a total of 106 years in jail, but the Belgrade-based appeals court annulled the verdict in March, calling it “incomprehensible and contradictory” and sent the case for retrial.

Following the showing of the film before the full auditorium of Sarajevo’s Cinemacity complex, a short discussion took place with the participation of the film directors, Marija Ristic and Nemanja Babic.

Ristic told the audience that the movie was primarily made for the Serbian public, which has not faced the terrible atrocities committed in Kosovo, but that because of the widespread policy of denial it was impossible to organize a showing in Serbia.

“We tried to rent a movie hall, but were rejected each time. Now our strategy is to try and show it in the region and create pressure (that would make it possible) to show the movie in Serbia”, said Ristic.

She added that the movie had a universal value, since it did not focus on the ethnicity of the perpetrators but testified of crimes committed by a group of criminals against innocent people.

Nemanja Babic said that some of the persons who were scheduled to be interviewed for the film, eventually refused to speak on the record because of fear.

Lydia Neely, a 25-year old New York resident who attended the screening, said that the movie was “beautiful” although its story was “horrible”.

“It is good that the film raised awareness to the situation (which) as an American I didn’t know”, she said.

Alexander Donev from Bulgaria said that this kind of movies should make their way to public broadcasters in order to generate public debate.

“This is a very important film, disturbing, brave. The obligation of all of us is to face crimes committed in our collective names”, he added.

The Sarajevo Film Festival was started during the war-time siege of the city and has grown in recent years into one of the biggest such events in Europe and regularly attracts thousands of visitors from all over the region and the world to the Bosnian capital. This year, this festival will show 259 films from 57 countries and many of them will be films from the countries of the Balkans and the South East and Central Europe.

    Denis Džidić


    This post is also available in: Bosnian