Let Our Voices Be Heard Too

El Shatt – A Blueprint for Utopia

June 2023 •Croatian

Hundreds of frozen and starved people floating on boats in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea fleeing from the war... Familiar scenes that we are used to seeing in recent times. But the year is 1944, and the refugees are travelling from Europe to Africa. After Italian capitulation,and before the arrival of German army, 28 000 Dalmatian Croats left their home villages and towns to live for two years under the tents in the middle of Egyptian desert, in a kind of a communist model village that was formed to show the Allies how the new Yugoslavia will look like when the war ends. This is a story about them.

The Collapse of Yugoslavia

January 1941 •German

German war documentary about Yugoslavia from 1941.

Serbia, Year Zero

November 2001 •French

Documentary that follows events after the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, while looking back on the previous fifteen years, tracing his rise to power. Personal testimony alternates with analysis of a disintegrating society.

Tuna Fishermen

December 1948 •

Film director Branko Belan follows the journey of fishermen as they set out to catch tuna around the Velebit Channel.

When My Knife Strikes You

January 1968 •

Shot in various villages throughout Yugoslavia, this is a disturbing document of a time when people were stabbing each other with knives without any real reason. Murderers, people who witness these murders and the families of victims all talk about the senseless violence and the human condition.

From 3 to 22

November 1966 •

A movie follows a regular working day of a woman who works in a factory. She wakes up at 3am and goes to sleep at 10pm.

The Truth About Pula

July 1947 •

Yugoslav Partisan propaganda film about the post-World War II events in Pula.

Yugoslavia: How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body

April 2013 •Serbian

A research-based essay film, but also a very personal perspective on the history of socialist Yugoslavia, its dramatic end, and its recent transformation into a few democratic nation states.

The Long Road Through Balkan History

January 2009 •English

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.

La Voz De La Experiencia. Cadena Del Water. El Film

January 2004 •Spanish

Istria

December 1945 •

Yugoslav Partisan propaganda film about the liberation of Istria at the end of the World War II.

The Weight of Chains

December 2010 •English

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.

City of Splendour

January 2013 •Croatian

A documentary about punk and subculture scene of Pula, Croatia from 1978 to 1991, the city that gave birth to one of the most vivid punk and alternative rock scenes in former Yugoslavia, despite having population of just over 60,000 residents.

Underdog: The Andy Swallow Story

August 2024 •English

From hooliganism and violence through to the ecstasy and the rise of rave culture, Andy Swallow, co-founder of West Ham's ICF and later Centreforce 883, opens up about his life for the very first time.

Hotel Sunja

January 1992 •Croatian

In 1992, the Yugoslav army and Serbian paramilitary forces captured one-third of Croatia as the country was engulfed in a state of war. A squad of fighters is defending their position in the small but strategically significant village of Sunja, where the invaders have surrounded them on three sides. Ivan Salaj, a young and gifted director who was still enrolled in film school at the time, chooses to use their story as the subject of his student film. Considered one of the most important films from a period when Croatian independence was still at stake, it provides an accurate portrayal of life on the front lines. What makes Hotel Sunja even more special is that it was made by a group of students who risked their lives to make the movie.

In the Valley of Neretva

November 1959 •Czech

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.

Lost Button

January 2015 •Croatian

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.

Saved by Language

January 2015 •English

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.

Pirates of the Airwaves

July 2014 •English

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.

Stealing of the Sun

January 1978 •

While new, monster housings are being erected, people grow a small farm in their vicinity. Soon the bulldozers come and ransack it.