RETURN TO EUROPE
SERBIA – EXIT EUROPE

DOCUMENTARY / A 2008 / HD CAM / 52 & 45 MINUTES
directed by Wolfgang Niedermair & Franz-Leopold Schmelzer

Synopsis

5 October 2000, the day when mass protests made Slobodan Milosević resign, was an historic turning point in Serbia: after 13 bloody years the country now saw the opportunity for a new future as part of Europe. But the hopes of the people were only met in part. Old power structures stood in the way of democratic and constitutional change, unsolved questions from the past such as the extradition of war criminals or the matter of Kosovo’s independence prevented an agreement being reached with Europe and the lack of foreign investments slowed down economic recovery. With the change in political direction in the spring of 2008 the “unfinished revolution” from October 2000 now seems to be finally starting again.
The documentary describes Serbia’s struggle to return to Europe by showing three very different places and the people there. In Novi Sad, the capital of Vojvodina, the organisers of the Exit Festival, the biggest rock event in the Balkans, are visited, and so are representatives of the Serbian Radical Party, which attracts a third of the population with its dangerous anti-Western propaganda and greater Serbian dreams. In Lescovac, a city in the south which was once considered the “Manchester of the Balkans” on account of its thriving textile industry, frightening pictures of a now ruined city show the consequences of economic isolation. Finally in Belgrade there are encounters with characters such as Nataša Kandić who fights tirelessly to bring Serbian war criminals to justice and has become a publically vilified hate figure of the radicals, and the journalist Dejan Anastasijević who publishes courageous articles revealing the dark state behind official policy and therefore has to fear for his life…

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