This two-part documentary reveals how al-Qaeda used Bosnia as a training-ground, money-laundering centre and forward operating base during the brutal civil war of 1992-95. The veterans went on to attack New York, Washington DC, London, Madrid, Mombasa and Bali. The story also reveals how the people of Srebrenica were betrayed by the Sarajevo government in advance of the massacres of July 1995.
Can a language save your life? Yes it can, even an ancient one from the 15th century. Saved by Language tells the story of Moris Albahari, a Sephardic Jew from Sarajevo (born 1930), who spoke Ladino/Judeo-Spanish, his mother tongue, to survive the Holocaust. Moris used Ladino to communicate with an Italian Colonel who helped him escape to a Partizan refuge after he ran away from the train taking Yugoslavian Jews to Nazi death camps. By speaking in Ladino to a Spanish-speaking US pilot in 1944 he was able to survive and lead the pilot, along with his American and British colleagues, to a safe Partizan airport.
A documentary about Goran Ivandic 'Ipe', the drummer of most popular Yugoslav rock band of all time, Sarajevo-based "Bijelo dugme" (White Button). Ivandic's fatal jump from the balcony of hotel Metropol in Belgrade in 1994 sparked much controversy around his fate.
Bosnian Croat writer Miljenko Jergović and Serbian writer Marko Vidojković replace one another by the steering wheel of Yugo, a symbol of their common past while driving on the Brotherhood and Unity Highway that stretched across five of six republics of Yugoslavia.
It shows the Neretva river from its source to the shores of the Adriatic Sea. The document also captures the original four-hundred-year-old bridge in Mostar.
In 1966 a group of determined young men defied the New Zealand government and launched a pirate radio station aboard a ship in the Hauraki Gulf.
For Serbian filmmaker Mila Turajlic, a locked door in her mother's apartment in Belgrade provides the gateway to both her remarkable family history and her country's tumultuous political inheritance.
Godina was ordered to make a short film glorifying the army, but instead made a film about making love, not war. The censors hacked it up, but he managed to save one complete copy.
The protagonists of this docudrama are old farmers who migrated to Banat after the First World War, in 1922. The film is focused on a couple of important events in their impressive lives, which are woven into lively scenes and stories full of wise instances. Their statements become spontaneous recounts of the lives of people in this region.
Drazen Petrovic and Vlade Divac were two friends who grew up together sharing the common bond of basketball. Together, they lifted the Yugoslavian National team to unimaginable heights. After conquering Europe, they both went to USA where they became the first two foreign players to attain NBA stardom. But with the fall of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day 1991, Yugoslavia split up. A war broke out between Petrovic's Croatia and Divac's Serbia. Long buried ethnic tensions surfaced. And these two men, once brothers, were now on opposite sides of a deadly civil war. As Petrovic and Divac continued to face each other on the basketball courts of the NBA, no words passed between the two. Then, on the fateful night of June 7, 1993, Drazen Petrovic was killed in an auto accident. This film will tell the gripping tale of these men, how circumstances beyond their control tore them apart, and whether Divac has ever come to terms with the death of a friend before they had a chance to reconcile.
The most popular children's magazine in Yugoslavia was called Modra lasta (Blue Swallow). In 1969, it created Lastan. For hundreds of thousands of children Lastan was a mythical hero who helped unhappy and confused little souls. Each child imagined him differently and felt confident to share with him what they could not confess to anyone else: Dear Lastan, I kissed him, am I pregnant?; Dear Lastan, I fell in love with a boy from my class... For decades Lastan was a legend and the best kept secret in journalism. This film, for the first time after almost five decades, reveals his true identity.
The film shows the work of the Red Cross in Sarajevo during socialist Yugoslavia. The Red Cross has been present in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1912, and thanks to its work, many families had a hot meal every day.
The story of the Yugoslavian football team who became youth world champions in Chile, 1987.
The Weight of Chains is a Canadian documentary film that takes a critical look at the role that the US, NATO and the EU played in the tragic breakup of a once peaceful and prosperous European state - Yugoslavia. The film, bursting with rare stock footage never before seen by Western audiences, is a creative first-hand look at why the West intervened in the Yugoslav conflict, with an impressive roster of interviews with academics, diplomats, media personalities and ordinary citizens of the former Yugoslav republics. This film also presents positive stories from the Yugoslav wars - people helping each other regardless of their ethnic background, stories of bravery and self-sacrifice.
Rapper Rodney P. presents the story of Britain's second wave of pirate radio DJs. In the 1980s a new generation of pirate radio stations appeared broadcasting from London tower blocks.
Zdravko Čolić is the biggest pop star in Yugoslavia. We follow him during his "Traveling Earthquake Tour", lerning who is the man behind the microphone, dancers, glittery suits... and in front of the audience.
A documentary film about the life and career of Momcilo Vukotic, one of the most significant footballers of Partizan and Yugoslav football. The film follows his sports career through interviews with former teammates, rivals and family, as well as his interests outside football, including painting and theater. Momcilo Moca Vukotic, won three Yugoslav championship titles as a player in 1976,1978 and 1983. As a sports-director, he won two tittles in 1986 and 1987. With the team from Humska street, he played 791 games in total, from 1968 till 1985. As a coach, he won Yugoslavia cup and Supercup in 1989. The film won awards for the best feature-length documentary film at the 14th International Sports Film Festival in Zlatibor as well as at the 3rd Budva Sports and Arts Film Festival.
Frustrated by commercial radio in the ’90s, a music-loving legal secretary builds one from scratch and runs it out of her LA apartment.
A study of the psychology of a champion ski-flyer, whose full-time occupation is carpentry.
In 1947, Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito visited, for the first time, Romania. Its communist regime gave him, as present, a painting from a great Romanian artist Ion Andeescu: 'The Leafless Forest'. In the 60s, a young art critic, Radu Bogdan, decided to elaborate a monograph dedicated to the great painter, including reproduction of the painting given to Tito. After countless problems, he obtained the permission to photograph the painting. The moment they took the painting off the wall, they found - a microphone. Somebody was spying on Tito...