| The first Serb-Croat Vukovar documentary
Miroslav Kuskunovic, Tomislav Levak
Jutarnji List,
www.jutarnjilist.hr
 “The
Final Cut” is the name of the first Croat-Serb documentary film
about the victims of Vukovar during the war, made in the style of
BBC documentaries, with witnesses and participators from both sides
giving accounts.
Working on the film were Croatian journalist Drago Hedl and Serbian
director Janko Baljak, famous for the documentary film about Belgrade
mobsters, “See You in the Obituary,” which was shown on HRT several
years ago. The film was finished last week, and will receive its
premier public showing at the Zagreb Documentary Film Festival.
“The best aspects of the film are that we are showing a bunch of
never-before-seen material, which includes findings which our Serbian
colleagues have been able to get from the archives of the former
YNA and from Belgrade and Novi Sad television stations. There is
also very valuable, rough television material, recorded right after
the fall of Vukovar,” Hedl said.
Especially shocking is the footage of Vesna Bosanac, the legendary
director of the Vukovar hospital, in a military vehicle looking
for her mother around Vukovar after its occupation. Also, for the
first time, footage will be shown of the talks between the YNA and
the Croatian Military about the surrender of Mitince, as well as
the sequence of events in October 1991, when the “hog” bomb, weighing
250 kilograms, went through the roof of the hospital and went all
the way down to the basement where patients were being held, and
thankfully, did not explode.
“This is the first film to show witness accounts from both sides.
I must stress however that it does not put the blame on anyone nor
does it try to create a balance of any kind, because it is very
well-know why and what happened in Vukovar.” Hedl said.
The film is divided into three parts, which each last a total of
40 minutes. In the film, 70 protagonists of the period reconstruct
the events occurring between the first elections of Croatia and
the massive killing at the Ovcara farm in 1991, while the ending
scene tells of Belgrade’s court process of uncovering these crimes,
which ended last year.
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