Srpska: The Struggle for Freedom | |
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Directed by | Boris Malagurski |
Screenplay by | Miloš Ninković |
Produced by | Boris Malagurski |
Starring | Stefan Popović, Emir Kusturica |
Production company | Malagurski Cinema |
Release date |
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Running time | 93 min |
Countries | Canada, Serbia |
Languages | English, Serbian |
Budget | $182,989 [1] |
Srpska: The Struggle for Freedom (Serbian : Република Српска: Борба за слободу) is a 2022 documentary film about the history of Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Directed and produced by Serbian Canadian filmmaker Boris Malagurski, the film was released on October 1, 2022, in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. [2] The film includes an interview with Sarajevo-born film director Emir Kusturica. [2]
The film starts with the beginnings of organized institutions in the areas around the source and lower course of the river Bosna, chronicling the rise of the medieval Bosnian state. The film later presents the fate of the Serbs inhabiting the land as intertwined with that of the Ottoman Empire and, eventually, Austria-Hungary’s fate, with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo sparking World War I.
The film then documents the role that this land played in the first Yugoslav state – the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, which later became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The suffering of the people, predominantly Serbs, Jews, Roma, and others, during World War II is presented in the film, together with a more peaceful and prosperous time that followed, under the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as led by Josip Broz Tito.
The film explains the principles according to which socialist Yugoslavia was organized, and also describes the stated goals of that state, which aspired to provide "centuries of peace" for the region. The 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo is a theme that runs throughout the film, as an example of what the people of the region could achieve when they put their differences aside and worked together for the common good and healthy competition.
The events that lead to the bloody wars in the former Yugoslavia are explained briefly and chronologically from the beginning to the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the signing of the Dayton Agreement in 1995 that led to the formation of the entity called Republika Srpska.
On October 9, 2022, five days before the scheduled Western European tour of Srpska: The Struggle for Freedom was scheduled to start in Lucerne, Switzerland, the Canadian Institute for the Research of Genocide (IGK) launched a petition to ban screenings of the film, saying it “revises the painful history of Bosnia” and that the film “denies the Bosnian genocide and the laws and verdicts of international courts and the United Nations”. [3] [4] [5] [6]
On October 11, the Mothers of the Srebrenica condemned the film, saying it "denies genocide" and denies "aggression against the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina". They were particularly offended that some scenes had been filmed at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre. [7]
The production company responded by saying that the campaign against the film started before the film had been released, meaning that the claims made about the film were not the result of analysis of the film’s content, but rather a part of an anti-Serbian agenda. [8] Nevertheless, several screenings in Europe were postponed or moved to other locations due to, what Malagurski said were "security concerns", as "threats included a man vowing to blow up every cinema that dares screen the film". [9]
On October 15, Tages-Anzeiger journalist Anielle Peterhans wrote that "Malagurski does not conceal the genocide of Srebrenica. In the film he clearly calls it the worst mass murder of mankind since World War II". [10] Aleksandra Hiltmann, of the same paper was critical of the film, calling Malagurski a "propagandist" and the film "problematic", adding that "the film presents events, facts and interpretations of the Bosnian war of the 1990s in an extremely selective manner" [11] Swiss People's Party politician Christoph Mörgeli accused Tages-Anzeiger of helping Bosnian and Albanian organizations to cancel the documentary, noting that the newspaper neglected to ask the activists if they "had seen the film at all". [12]
The “Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention” also condemned the film for "genocide denial and an outrageous misrepresentation of documented historical facts". [13] The film's production company noted that "in the film, we denounce all war crimes that took place in the Bosnian war of the 1990s, with our team filming at the Srebrenica Memorial, condemning what happened there as "the largest single act of mass-killing in the Yugoslav Wars, and the worst in Europe since World War II" and adding that the Hague Tribunal, in its verdict" declared that "what happened in Srebrenica constituted genocide", without negating this." [8]
Hessischer Rundfunk journalist Daniel Majic, wrote that the film was a "feel-good movie for Serbian nationalists who don't even try to hide their concerns", and although "genocide is not denied ... instead of letting his narrator speak of a genocide, he merely states that the Srebrenica massacre was assessed as such by the International Criminal Court in The Hague". [14] Malagurski gave an interview to Sarajevo-based O Kanal , in which head of superdesk[ clarify ], Kenan Ćosić, who saw the film prior to the interview, confirmed that the film doesn't deny genocide, [15] [ failed verification ] with Malagurski saying that he insisted on his film team visiting Potočari (Srebrenica), "to pay their respects to those killed." [16] Bosnian journalist, Vildana Selimbegović (editor-in-chief of the daily Oslobođenje ) wrote that "the Bosnian War is discussed for 5-6 minutes [in the film]. And in those couple of minutes, the film found place for the verdict of the Tribunal about the genocide in Srebrenica and that the debate about that verdict is still going on." [17]
A campaigner against the film told Al-Jazeera that six days of screenings had been cancelled in 19 European cities. [4] Cancellations included Salzburg, Offenbach, Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Dortmund, Klagenfurt, Brussels and Antwerp. [18] [4] [19] [6] [14] However, according to Malagurski Cinema and other sources, as of February 6, 2023, the film had been screened in Lucerne, Zürich, Uster, Bern, Stuttgart, Vienna, Višegrad, [20] [21] St. Gallen, [10] Dortmund, [22] Rotterdam, Antwerpen, [9] Frankfurt, [14] and Stockholm, [23] [ failed verification ] as well as locations in Serbia and Republika Srbska.
Srebrenica is a town and municipality in Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is a small mountain town, with its main industry being salt mining and a nearby spa.
Naser Orić is a former Bosnian military officer who commanded Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) forces in the Srebrenica enclave in eastern Bosnia surrounded by Bosnian Serb forces, during the Bosnian War.
Republika Srpska is one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is located in the north and east of the country. Its largest city and administrative centre is Banja Luka, lying on the Vrbas river, and with a population of about 138,963 people.
Foča is a town and municipality in Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is located in south-eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the banks of the Drina river. As of 2013, the town has a population of 12,234 inhabitants, while the municipality has 18,288 inhabitants. Foča houses some faculties from the Istočno Sarajevo University. It is also home to the "Seminary of Saint Peter of Sarajevo and Dabar-Bosna", one of seven seminaries in the Serbian Orthodox Church. Foča was also, until 1992, home to one of Bosnia's most important Islamic high schools, the Madrasa of Mehmed Pasha Kukavica. The Sutjeska National Park, which is the oldest National Park in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is located in the municipality.
The Bosnian War was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. The war is commonly seen as having started on 6 April 1992, following a number of earlier violent incidents. The war ended on 14 December 1995 when the Dayton accords were signed. The main belligerents were the forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia, and the Republika Srpska, the latter two entities being proto-states led and supplied by Croatia and Serbia, respectively.
The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide, was the July 1995 genocidal killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys in and around the town of Srebrenica, during the Bosnian War. The killings were perpetrated by units of the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of Ratko Mladić. The Scorpions, a paramilitary unit from Serbia, who had been part of the Serbian Interior Ministry until 1991, also participated in the massacre.
The Republika Srpska was a self-proclaimed statelet in Southeastern Europe under the control of the Army of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War. It claimed to be a sovereign state, though this claim was only partially recognized by the Bosnian government in the Geneva agreement, the United Nations, and FR Yugoslavia. For the first six months of its existence, it was known as the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Milorad Dodik is a Bosnian Serb politician serving as the 8th president of Republika Srpska since 2022, having previously served from 2010 to 2018. He also served as the 7th Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2018 to 2022.
The Višegrad massacres were acts of mass murder committed against the Bosniak civilian population of the town and municipality of Višegrad during the ethnic cleansing of eastern Bosnia by Republika Srpska police and military forces during the spring and summer of 1992, at the start of the Bosnian War.
The modern-day countries of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia both originated from Yugoslavia. The majority of population in both countries speak one of the standard varieties of Serbo-Croatian and Serbia is one of the largest investors in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Emir Suljagić is a Bosnian journalist and politician who is currently the Director of the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial. He served as Minister of Education of Sarajevo Canton from 13 January 2011 until 29 February 2012 and was also Deputy minister of Defense from 31 March 2015 to 10 December 2015.
Report about Case Srebrenica (the first part) was a controversial official report on the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was prepared by Darko Trifunović and published by the Republika Srpska Government Bureau for Relations with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Vujadin Popović is a Bosnian Serb war criminal, who participated in the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina and was convicted of genocide, extermination, murder and persecution and sentenced to life in prison. He was Lieutenant Colonel and the Chief of Security of the Drina Corps of the Army of Republika Srpska.
The Prosecutor v. Ratko Mladić was a war crimes trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, Netherlands, concerning crimes committed during the Bosnian War by Ratko Mladić in his role as a general in the Yugoslav People's Army and the Chief of Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska.
UDIK, the Association for Social Research and Communications, is the Bosnian non-governmental organization with offices in Sarajevo and Brčko. It was founded in 2013 by Edvin Kanka Ćudić. Organization aimed to gather facts, documents, and data on genocide, war crimes, and human rights violations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the former Yugoslavia.
Bosnian genocide denial is the act of denying the occurrence of the systematic Bosnian genocide against the Bosniak Muslim population of Bosnia and Herzegovina, or asserting it did not occur in the manner or to the extent that has been established by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) through proceedings and judgments, and described by comprehensive scholarship.
Events in the year 2018 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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