The Weight of Chains

Well documented story! The author was very young during the war, so rather the being emotional for the sake of his Serbian "fraternity", he chose obvious facts, lots of audio and video recordings that cannot be propaganda. Propanada is not what this documentary is about, because it would be useless when too much damage has already been done, and propaganda can fix a zero thing right now. This not being just a lament over the sad old times is also an attempt to reconcile the people who certainly all have been victims, regardless of their ethnicity. The author tried to show the position of the people of the Balkans in general, taking about the geopolitical position, which is something other authors before him missed to do.

I watched the film after I read that it "... takes a critical look at the role that the US, NATO and the EU played in ... Yugoslavia." The documentary failed at doing so. On the technical side, it is a fine documentary, the wicked, dark sense of humor makes it watchable, and if you're looking for a superficial, anti-western story about Yugoslavia, I guess you can enjoy watching it. The film is probably doing great in Russia. The authors anti-western, and "pro-Serb" (more like pro-tycoon) view has, as a result, some serious flaws in the story... He used interviews with people not known to the wide audience, presenting them as "former adviser of the president", without saying the name of the president - Slobodan Milosevic, which makes all the difference. How relevant this "adviser" guy is, shows his criticism on the West allowing low-rate credits for Serbia, as an evil scheme to increase Serbian debt(?). When the privatization was mentioned, the author failed to stress the role Milosevic's era tycoons had, letting the audience think it were western companies who bought and destroyed all the factories in Serbia. The film looks like a bad compromise between producers, director(s), author... at the same time, the author is anti-war, anti-nationalist, yet he has a soft view on Serbian war crimes - barely mentions Srebrenica Massacre, says nothing about war crimes on Kosovo, and Chetnics are presented as pro-Yugoslav freedom fighters. Slobodan Milosevic is portrayed as almost an average politician. The film makes a dark spotlight on the pro-EU parties in Serbia, making it easy for an average viewer to come up with a belief that anti-EU parties are the solution, when in fact the other side is even worse than current parties in power, hence the majority of the people voted them. If the author could have made that step back, and separate himself from the Serbian daily politic, it would be an important documentary on former Yugoslavia, Serbia, and US/EU involvement... but as I said before, it totally failed. Too bad, cos US and EU politics on former Yugoslavia was completely wrong from the start, still is, and someone should definitely publish a good, and important story about that.

I watched the first phase of the Balkans 90s conflict play out whilst studying for a degree in Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution at a UK college... it was made immediately part of the course. Since then I've made a constant effort to keep an eye of how things have progressed - right up to the recent duping of the people in Kosovo - who seem to welcome being made one big US/NATO base.

Anyway - apart from a 5 part BBC series - nothing has tackled this issue in the depth it demands till now apart from this Documentary. Ignore the handful of reviewers who claim it's "Serb propaganda" - that's just idiotic - in fact this is one of the best produced and written documentaries I've seen on contemporary geopolitical monkey-business to date! The interview snatches are all from erudite commentators, the chronology is unravelled in a comprehensive manner and footage they've amassed really adds a human quality to things. The footage of elderly Serb and Croat neighbours being forced to pack-up and leave after living together without and issue is heart-wrenching (and definitely not staged before someone suggests this).

Also - by peeling away the propaganda the Serbs have been framed with for so long - we finally begin to hear the real ramifications of the war... which was partially a CORPORATE war. Bosnitch adds some amazing facts - such as the Yugo car industry being terminated by clever bombing - and the take-over by US firm Philip Morris by Clinton agreeing to bomb three times a very successful Serb cigarette factory - so much for military targets??! Recommended. A total and much needed breath of air.

Ignore the radical reviewers, there is a lot of solid information here, so solid that Croats and Bosnians "wasted" 2 hours of their life to watch this films and try to convince you not to see it.

Amazing how denial plays a role so deep in all this matter, there were no innocent parties in this ugly war, they all share the same amount of responsibility.

I have studied the subject and seen several documentaries on this chapter of recent history in Europe, the one thing that is Crystal clear is that Croats, Bosnians and Serbs will never acknowledge their crimes.

Croats were no saints in this war and probably they should carry 40% of the responsibility of the break up of the country, the remaining 60% split between Serbs and Bosnians

You must see this one because is one of the few documentaries that tells the other side of the story, of course, understanding that a balance between what you see here and what the other side presents can give you a more neutral opinion.

All those dismissing this documentary, calling it propaganda, lies and so on, surely are those who know better but can't accept their own role in the crimes the helped commit and now want to make everyone believe they did nothing wrong.

Most people are not so naive as to really believe that Croatia and Bosnia didn't do anything wrong or that Serbia did it all by themselves, that is the Croat and Bosnian cheap propaganda, play victims and blame someone else.

Serbs must accept as well that not everyone was against them, part of the blame is within their own politicians.

In all Croatians, Bosnians and Serbian committed crimes against humanity, BUT there is a pale bright light, Croatians stared opening companies in Serbia, they can do business there but Serbians are not yet welcome in Croatia, lets hope this will change one day.

This is a Serbian documentary but anybody who watches it from the area of former Yugoslavia will learn that everything is not black and white and it never is.

Not many Croats will have the willpower to watch the whole documentary but they should not because of the part about politics before the war and war itself but for the second part that talks about economy and what has happened to us all after the wars.

Pay attention to the graph of the Yugoslavia and the debt that each country accumulated.

Shame that the author was not more neutral because many people will not see it because of it.

At the end its better to be a colony then to kill each other.