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.
The eight-year Iran-Iraq War was one of the most brutal conflicts to devastate the region in the 20th century. Zahed was 13 years old when he enrolled in the Iranian army. Najah was 18 when he was conscripted into the Iraqi army, and he fought against Zahed in the Battle of Khorramshahr. Fast forward 25 years, a chance encounter in Vancouver between these two former enemies turns into a deep and mutually supportive friendship. Expanded from the 2015 short film by the same name.
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.
Directors Hetherington and Junger spend a year with the 2nd Battalion of the United States Army located in one of Afghanistan's most dangerous valleys. The documentary provides insight and empathy on how to win the battle through hard work, deadly gunfights and mutual friendships while the unit must push back the Taliban.
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.
Sometimes the greatest act of courage is to tell the truth. Hear and witness our soldiers in this penetrating film. The shocking Iraq War ground conflict is only a prelude to the even more challenging battles these reluctant heroes face upon their return home.
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.
A study of the psychology of a champion ski-flyer, whose full-time occupation is carpentry.
In Thailand, all males turning 21 must participate in the military draft lottery. Drawing a black card grants exemption. Drawing a red card results in two years of military service. This short film follows two girls, who were born as males, as they participate in the drafting process.
The pride of Napoleon's victories, the Arc de Triomphe, whose first stone was laid in 1806 at the top of the Champs-Élysées, is, along with the Eiffel Tower, one of the most visited monuments in the French capital. Wanted by an emperor, inaugurated under the reign of a king (Louis-Philippe) and sanctuarized by the Republic, this patriotic temple polarizes the passions of a whole nation. A historical portrait before "packaging", which teems with anecdotes and unsuspected details.
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.
This documentary was inspired by the artistic life of Serbian actress Sonja Savić. Being a wonder child, a star of Yugoslavian cinematography, a sex symbol, and urban legend of the eighties generation, a fighter against establishment, Sonja Savić had always attracted attention. Simply put, she always looked, spoke and thought differently from others, she was entirely autonomous, an authentic phenomenon of Serbian culture. In the documentary SONJA, friends and colleagues of Sonja Savić testify on many aspects of her life and work, and a special emphasis is put on Sonja’s libertarian, rebellious, Don Quixote type of nature.
This first-person documentary provides an inside look into the terrifying and bloody events that shook Central Europe in the 1990s, as the filmmaker takes a trip along the road that once united the disparate states of Yugoslavia, from Slovenia to Macedonia. A film about memory, hatred, love and hope.
Emir Kusturica views himself as a rock musician and believes that he became a world-famous filmmaker by pure chance, as he shoots his movies only in between concert tours with the “No Smoking Orchestra” band. At these little pinpoints of time he gets “Palms d’Or” at Cannes, “Golden Lions” in Venice, builds his own villages, a power plant and a piste and regrets not becoming a professional football player. Kusturica’s own living is very much similar to his movies, where shoes are polished with cats, death is treated like a story from tabloid press, and life is a miracle...
Through the conversation with Yugoslav film authors and excerpts from their films, this documentary film tells a story of a film phenomenon and censorship, and its focus is, in fact, a painful epoch of Yugoslav film called “a Black Wave”, which was the most important and artistically strongest period of Yugoslav film industry, created in the sixties and buried in the early seventies by means of ideological and political decisions. The film tells a great “thriller” story of the ideological madness which characterised the totalitarian psychology having left multiple consequences felt up to our very days. It stresses similarities between totalitarian regimes defending their taboos on the example of the persecution of the most important Yugoslav film authors. Those film authors have, however, made world careers and inspired many later authors. The film is the beginning of a debt pay-off to the most significant Yugoslav film authors.
Seven years after completing an Israeli Defense Course for female combat soldiers, director Hen Lasker returns to take a deeper look at the place where she first fell in love with a woman. Over the course of 66 days and nights, Lasker shoots a fly-on-the-wall documentary that allows unprecedented intimacy into the lives of the trainees and commanders of the Israeli army. The dichotomy of the innocence of these baby-faced trainees with the heavy burden of military service is a central theme of the film, illustrated in a scene where they discuss losing their virginity while waiting their turn to fire a machine gun. But it is the director’s relationship with Smadar, a breathtaking commander struggling to mask her gentle soul with a strict military persona, which makes the film truly enchanting. The intersection of love, duty, and personal growth thrive through to the film’s surprisingly moving finish.
In an unprecedented and candid series of interviews, six former heads of the Shin Bet — Israel's intelligence and security agency — speak about their role in Israel's decades-long counterterrorism campaign, discussing their controversial methods and whether the ends ultimately justify the means.
True stories of the Croatian People's struggle to overcome oppression from communist Yugoslavia and the 1990's fight to save their war ravaged homeland.
A documentary about army cooks and how the everyday needs of thousands of armed stomachs affect the victories and defeats of statesmen. The film is based on eleven meals based on recipes from the Second World War till the war in Chechnya; from France through the Balkans to Russia.
A documentary film-project by Dmytro Komarov. He was the first journalist to witness and film the horrors of the just-liberated towns of Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel. He saw the first emotions of people immediately after the de-occupation of Kyiv region, Kharkiv region, and Kherson region. The documentary is the author's view of the war from angles that you won't see in the news. Unique, rare, exclusive comments from those whose hands and minds are shaping our future victory. The main heroes of documentary are both ordinary Ukrainians who heroically show their strength and power every day for a year and high-ranking officials such as Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Kyrylo Budanov, Major General Oleksandr Syrskyi, Commander of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk. Initially, "Year" was a series of journalistic reports, later they were edited into a two-part film.