yugoslavian history

15 movies and shows

Great Transport

Mon, 04 Jul 1983

This WW2 epic was one of the last movies of that kind made in former Yugoslavia. It tells the true story of great transport of Partizans from Vojvodina to Bosnia in 1943.

The mother of a national hero Nikoletina Bursac leads an imaginary conversation with the statue of her deceased son. We follow events from Nikoletina's life and war: his joining of the partisans together with his neighbor Jovica Jez, meeting with the small Jewish girl Erna who survived the slaughter of her village, constant quarrels and friendship with commander Pirgo and commissar Zlatko, meeting with Curetak and their unsuccessful love relationship.

Innocence Unprotected

Tue, 12 Nov 1968

A documentary about the famous athlete and movie enthusiast who made Serbia's first sound film, Innocence Unprotected. The Nazi occupation of Belgrade prevented the film from gaining wider acclaim. Director Makavejev intersperses clips of the original film with interviews of surviving cast and crew members, as well as newsreel and archival footage.

Fragments of Humanity

Mon, 31 Jan 2022

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.

Men Don't Cry

Thu, 05 Oct 2017

The armed conflicts of the 1990s not only visibly destroyed the land of the former Yugoslavia, but also left the deepest wounds in the memory of each of its belligerent nations. There are as many different interpretations of that bleak past as there are countries affected. It is therefore hard to expect absolute harmony when, less than two decades since the war ended, a diverse group of veterans gathers at a remote mountain hotel for a therapy session over several days. On the contrary, such a dangerously volatile situation can suddenly ignite by just one thoughtless word, or a seemingly dirty look. That’s because the former soldiers, obstinately holding on to their fundamental masculinity and their prejudices, refusing to expose the inhumanity of the atrocities perpetrated. However, this quietness is just about to be broken and hidden emotions are to be faced.

Superfluous

Thu, 08 Feb 1962

Young farmer Mikajlo while on youth labour action falls in love with a student Nada and infatuated with her, he leaves the peasant brigade and Malena, a girl who as if she were overabundant, followed him to work the labour action. Mikajlo's courtship of Nada provokes laughter and ridicule, so ambitious 'Don Juan' returns to his brigade and the girl.

Here Be Dragons

Fri, 02 Feb 2024

A war crimes investigator goes to Belgrade to hunt a man whom everybody thought was dead.

Yugoslavia: How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body

Mon, 01 Apr 2013

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 Seventh Cronicle

Mon, 01 Jan 1996

In former Yugoslavia, following Tito's break-up with Stalin, the rocky island of Goli Otok was the camp site for political prisoners. From that officially non-existant yet dreaded place a young man escapes and seeks refuge on a nearby island. The nuns from the local convent find him unconscious and decide to give him shelter. A relentless secret policeman comes to the island and starts making life miserable for its inhabitants, hoping to find his prey...

Stone Sleeper

Wed, 01 Jan 1969

Film inspired by the beauty of medieval tombstones, stećaks, scattered around the mountains of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Mak Dizdar’s poem about them. Film explores the distant past immortalized in inscriptions on these ancient tombstones.

The Love of Books: A Sarajevo Story

Thu, 21 Apr 2011

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.

Saved by Language

Thu, 15 Jan 2015

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.

Partizani

Wed, 02 Dec 2015

Nikšić, Montenegro, September the 9th, 1943. Few moments after the dawn, the artilleryman Sante Pelosin, nickname Tarcisio, fires the first cannon shot against a German column that was proceeding towards Italian placement. In the following weeks about 20000 Italian soldiers decide to not surrender and join Jugoslavian Resistance. The partisans of the Garibaldi Division narrated in this documentary are simple heroes, that fought the freeze, the hunger, and a crushing typhus fever epidemy, paying with tremoundous sufferings a valiant and aware choice of field .

The Long Road Through Balkan History

Thu, 01 Jan 2009

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.

Flotel Europa

Tue, 10 Feb 2015

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.