Serbian Epics

"The Road to War" uses elaborate and fascinating computer-generated recreations and archives never seen before to examine how the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 was used by the Austro-Hungarian Empire to start a war against Serbia. The film investigates how this regional conflict involving the Central Powers and the Triple Entente escalated to become "World War I", a war with more than 17 million dead and More than 20 million injured.

In this film the last living witnesses of the events from Second World War are telling their stories and thus transferring silenced victim’s voices to present times.

Filmmaker Sabina Vajraca documents her Bosnian Muslim family's return to their home of Banja Luka, Bosnia, to recover their stolen belongings many years after being forced to flee to the United States. In Bosnia, they witness the devastation of the city, visit war crimes sites, and confront the family that has been living in their former apartment -- with all their furnishings -- for a decade.

A hotel in the centre of town is a war-time home and refuge for many of Sarajevo's homeless people. Every morning they leave the hotel and wander around the destroyed city gathering again at the defunct hotel in the afternoon. This film follows their separate fates through the bitter comparing of images of the bums with those of dogs abandoned by their owners and now left et the mercy of the war ravaged streets of Sarajevo.

At the end of WWI, the treaty of Versailles established the conditions for peace in Europe. The aim for the victorious powers was to make Germany pay reparations, and to guarantee a future without war. Yet a decade later, the denunciation of 'Versailles' became a powerful lever for the nazis to obtain power as these reparations would mark the beginning of the humiliation of the German people, and nurture a feeling of having been bestowed a hopeless future. In the 20 years that follow the end of WWI, the issue of reparations and responsibility will effectively poison international relationship. The treaty negative impact goes well beyond WWII as the new European borders it implemented led to many conflicts during the twentieth century. This documentary shines a light on the causality between the decisions taken with the treaty of Versailles, and the ensuing events of the century.

An exploration of the perils of nationalism and art’s role as a weapon of resistance and activism throughout the 1990s Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. Explore how art and music sustained hope, thanks in part to humanitarians and the band U2.

When this film’s director was still a boy, he stood in front of “Flotel Europa“ and was hugely excited about the prospect of this gigantic ship moored in the port of Copenhagen becoming a new home for him, his mother and his older brother. Together with about 1000 other refugees from the former Yugoslavia, they started life anew on the ship.

In the Kosovo War, human dignity was shattered by the terrors of the Serbian government and the Albanian liberation army. Truths about the victims’ fates faded away, which is why a Finnish forensic research group led by Helena Ranta got a mission to act as an unbiased agent and investigate the real course of events.

Serbia is located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and the central Balkans. It is also one of Europe’s natural wonders, filled with a rich variety of landscapes and animals.To this day a large number of Serbian people live in close communion with nature, proud of the storks’ nests in the villages, the ancient species of livestock that have been preserved and the vultures that return to make their home here. In many places people are pleased to see bears, lynx and wolves, and even jackals are at home in the forests of Serbia. This documentary presents Serbia's breath-taking, picturesque regions and unique wildlife on a journey to the most beautiful and wildest areas of the Balkan Peninsula.

In September 2004, Himzo Muratovic returned from the dead. Himzo turned up in a taxi in his Bosnian Muslim village, 12 years after he disappeared at the height of the Serb terror. His mother fell unconscious when neighbors told her that her missing son had returned. For several days the village celebrated the return of the long-dead Himzo Muratovic.

On 11th of July 1995, the most mortifying crimes after World War II in Europe destroyed the Bosnian town of Srébrenica. Shootings and deportations beyondimagination were preceded by a betrayal of humaity: while 40,000 civilians were looking into the sky of Srébrenica, waiting for a sign from the international community, guaranteeing their protection, the headquarters of the United Nations decided to surrender. The betrayal kill 8,372 men, women and children. Sky above Srebrenica (101 minutes) is based on protocols of the secret crisis meetings of the UN headquarters. In a unique way never before released original material of the consequences is shown next to those who are responsible for these.

Hamdija Šahinpašić (1914-2003) was one of those rare individuals able to memorize songs in their authentic traditional form. Šahinpašić belonged to a family known for its songs. In the early 1950's, Miodrag A. Vasiljević recorded Šahinpašić singing dozen of songs at the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Belgrade. A 1967 publication finally included 300 of his songs, published bilingually in Bosnian and Russian. Šahinpašić himself become the focus of attention of numerous ethnomusicologists and folklorists and his repertoire was preserved on recording of good quality.

At the beginning of Sumadijska street in the vicinity of Slavija Square on the 11th August 1913, the Serbian victorious army from the Second Balkan War led by the Crown Prince Alexander Karadjordjevic was given a huge welcome by the highest military and political authorities of Serbia and Belgrade, representatives of civil organizations and national institutions, as well as several tens of thousands of people from Belgrade, Serbia and Vojvodina.

Shot in six European countries, it tells the story of the concerts given by cult underground band Laibach during the siege of Sarajevo back in 1995.

In her autobiographical documentary, the young director uses cartoon impressions, photographic memories, and the various stages of baking a cake to draw the viewer into her own stream of consciousness, and using images full of kindness, tenderness, and playfulness, she deals with the sadness that began during a children's birthday party many years ago.

Bosnia was divided by war in the 1990s. The older population stayed while the younger population left. The film’s two mediums, documentary and animation, fluctuate along the border of two worlds, which separated time and historical events but are united by a longing for home and family. People are like dogs: they never forget their way home.

The Unidentified is a feature-length documentary which reveals who were the commanders responsible for some of the most brutal attacks of the Kosovo war. The result of a two-year-long investigation, the documentary names the officers who ordered attacks on villages in the area around the town of Pec during the 1999 war and those who were involved in the removal of victims’ bodies to mass graves at the Batajnica police centre near Belgrade in Serbia. Sixteen years after they committed the crimes, they live peacefully in the Serbian capital, and despite the evidence that exists, they have not been prosecuted.

A project of theatre-documentary on the Srebrenica massacre.

Documentary which tells the story of a group of men and women who risked their lives to rescue a library - and preserve a nation's history - in the midst of the Bosnian war. Amid bullets and bombs and under fire from shells and snipers, this handful of passionate book-lovers safeguarded more than 10,000 unique, hand-written Islamic books and manuscripts - the most important texts held by Sarajevo's last surviving library.

Milica Ostojic (aka Mica Trofrtaljka or Mica Davorika), a singer from Milicevci near Cacak (Serbia) by singing the song "Davorike, dajke" became a big star of new underground music in the seventies in former Yugoslavia. Forgotten for years, she returned to the scene in the film "Pretty Village, Pretty Flame", saying the historical sentence: "Shut up mate, erotica".