Only those who aren’t familiar with the political and media situation in Serbia were surprised by the fact that the award-winning film by the Sarajevo director Jasmila Žbanić, Quo Vadis, Aida?, survived a real political and media frenzy in this country, while hardly anyone had the opportunity to watch it. It is not the first time that something similar has happened. At one time, for example, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts published a book that was a fierce response to Noel Malcolm's book Kosovo: A Short History, although the latter was never published in the Serbian language, nor could it be bought in bookstores there. The government often responds to criticisms by the opposition via its completely dominant media outlets, even though the criticisms are published only in the few independent media with little influence.

 

As far as we know, Quo Vadis, Aida? has been shown in Serbia only four times in almost intimate private screenings: one was held in Belgrade for journalists, another in Novi Pazar, and two in Novi Sad in the alternative culture club CK13 and a feminist festival. Not a single television station in Serbia, from public media services to those that are independent of the government, found it appropriate to share the film with their viewers, regardless of the fact that, in addition to all other recognition it received before, this achievement was declared the best European film at the end of last year, and the Novi Sad actress Jasna Đuričić was awarded the title of best European actress for the leading role. The reason for this strange mix of hype and ignoring is more than obvious: the film deals with one of the most traumatic topics in these areas – the genocide in Srebrenica, and in a way that perhaps hurts more than some kind of potential propaganda pamphlet because it is a great, artistically transposed human story told from the perspective of the victims, in which there are no big politics or narratives, without the pathetic and pornography of the crimes. This is completely opposite to the thematization of the crime in Jasenovac in the Serbian state project, the film Dara from Jasenovac.

 

It cannot be said that part of the local public, primarily respectable individuals and some organizations, did not protest the fact that the film is being campaigned against and that it is not shown on the public media service. But on the other hand, the professional public failed, again as expected. Film and theatre workers in Serbia, with some exceptions, are afraid to criticize the authorities, and especially to chime into turbulent topics such as Serbia's attitude towards the war past. When they do rebel against the government, they mostly lose work in difficult times, and if they were to bring up topics such as so-called confronting the past, they would unequivocally quickly and cruelly find themselves under attack by the regime and society, various "patriotic"-minded groups and individuals who know how to make people's lives very difficult. When it comes to the 1990s, there is either a conspiracy of silence in Serbia or - more and more systematically – the gradual or complete return of the narrative about Serbs as the only victims who were persecuted because of their "righteousness". And this can be seen, better than anywhere else, in the example of this film production. One of the main reasons for this attitude towards the 1990s is the fact that the country has been ruled for a decade by more or less the same elites as during the wars – elites that don’t want their responsibility for the greatest moral, political and economic crash in the history of Serbia that happened in the last decade of the 20th century to be under scrutiny.

 

Although the period after the fall of Milošević until the rise to power of the renamed radicals in 2012 can hardly be said to be a time in which Serbia openly talked about the crimes committed in the name of this country during the previous decade, it can neither be said that this topic was completely hidden from the public. It was passionately discussed on television shows and in public debates, trials from the Hague Tribunal were broadcast, films were shown that dealt with national neuralgic points, and the RTS aired gruesome footage of the crimes committed by The Scorpions in Trnovo, which - to say the least - left the local public speechless. For example, Jasmila Žbanić's film Grbavica had screenings and a large audience in Belgrade despite opposition by "patriots". It was far from enough, and the policy-makers of the 1990s were never held accountable or denounced, but the subject was not completely “under lock and key” as it is today. 

 

When he came to power in 2012, the current president of Serbia and its undisputed leader who is asked about everything and always has the final say, Aleksandar Vučić, presented himself as a man who had experienced political "enlightenment" and renounced radical, ultra-nationalist and warmongering politics. The West perceived him as a factor that would contribute to the resolution of regional problems and disputes, and for a time he successfully advertised his "coup" in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. He was also perceived as someone who would speed up the democratization of Serbia and its path toward the EU.

 

Even then, many analysts pointed out the discrepancy between Vučić's propaganda image and what is actually happening in Serbia. Firstly, he very quickly seized control of almost all the media in Serbia, disempowered the institutions, and appointed ultra-nationalists and warmongers who never renounced their role in the 90s war to important positions in the structure of government and power. On the contrary, they are proud of their role. Civic intellectuals, except for those close to the regime, disappeared from public life, the opposition was razed to the ground, and at the same time, the narrative from the nineties returned to the media close to the government and soon turned into classic hate speech. Although Vučić still swears by Serbia's European path, the results of media control and government propaganda show that the opposite process is actually at work. Namely, the European Union has never been less popular in Serbia than it is today, from 2000 onwards: as many as 51 per cent of citizens would vote against its entry into the European Community of Nations in a referendum, while only a third would vote for it, and half of the latter group is only “for” it if Serbia does not have to make any concessions due to progress towards the EU. So, in the EU, but under our conditions!

 

 

In many places across the cities of Serbia, there are graffiti and murals in honour of people who have committed the most terrible crimes, including genocide, which has been proven in court and in every other way, and the government does absolutely nothing to remove them or at least publicly condemn them. Those who are critical of these phenomena are declared "enemies" or "traitors". Persons who have been convicted at the Hague Tribunal and have served their sentences regularly appear on national television as analysts of internal, regional and global political developments. Some convicts are also on the main committee of the Serbian Progressive Party, such as Veselin Šljivančanin. Editorial and managerial positions in the media close to the government are occupied by war-propaganda vedettes from the nineties, and the circle was closed by the recent media activation of Milorad Komrakov, the editor of the RTS news program in its darkest period. All this of course affects public opinion, so the results of the research on the attitude of Serbian citizens towards war and war crimes, which was published a few years ago by Demostat for the needs of the daily newspaper "Danas", are more than worrying. 

 

Only 23 per cent of Serbian citizens, for example, know which city was under siege for four years in the nineties, 47 per cent of them believe that the biggest victims of the wars in ex-Yugoslavia are Serbs, and 41 per cent of them do not know the answer to that question. Only five per cent of respondents have a positive attitude towards the Hague Tribunal. The accused of other nations are – according to the vast majority – guilty, although very few respondents know what they were actually accused of. Only ten per cent of citizens believe that a marker should be placed on the site of the mass grave in Batajnica, where Albanian civilian victims were transported from Kosovo and buried during the 1990s. In fact, 83 per cent of respondents do not even know that there were mass graves in Serbia, and 94 per cent do not know that there were prisoner-of-war camps in Serbia during the nineties.

 

The results of a recently published survey (also Demostat) are frightening when it comes to the attitude of the citizens of Serbia towards the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Namely, the dominant public opinion is that Russia is Serbia's most important foreign policy partner, and 80 per cent of citizens do not agree that sanctions should be imposed on Russia. Of course, all this has to do with the attitude towards the nineties, because in this country Russia and Putin are seen as allies who will take revenge on the "hateful West" for all the defeats that Serbia suffered in the nineties.

 

 

In this political and social context, it is of course no coincidence that one of the first Serbian "film critics" to speak against Quo Vadis, Aida? was Major Veselin Šljivančanin, who was sentenced to ten years in prison before the Hague Tribunal for crimes committed in the area of Vukovar, and who is now a high official of Vučić's party. He told a newspaper in December 2020 that Žbanić's film serves the Muslims' desire to "make Bosnia an ethnically pure Muslim country on the soil of Europe". In the same text, Dragoslav Bokan, who is a director by profession, but was the commander of the infamous paramilitary formation The White Eagles during the war, also makes a statement. Bokan attacked the married couple of actors from Serbia (Jasna Đuričić and Boris Isaković) who, according to him, agreed to do something "unspeakable" "for money". It is – according to Bokan - "a political project in which Žbanić uses two Serbian actors who play key roles in the film in a very cunning and perfidious manner in the style of brutal propaganda that we call Goebbelsian". It is not impossible that Bokan and Šljivančanin commented on the film without even watching it (it premiered a few months earlier at the Venice Film Festival), and certainly both of them are a kind of spokesmen for the authorities in Serbia. Much like, for example, the columnist of Večernje Novosti Filip Rodić, who, a year later, established that "the political Sarajevo, with Žbanić as its representative par excellence, believes that the war is not over", i.e., that it is calling for "the complete destruction (physical or spiritual) of the absolute enemy", the Serbian people. According to him, that destruction would happen if the film was shown on RTS. 

 

There are countless other reports in media close to the government which repeat similar assessments with an even more negative tone. According to the regime media, the film is "anti-Serbian", it represents the Serbs as a "genocidal people", and those who are advocating for it to be shown in Serbia, i.e. on the public media service, are actually "leading a mindless campaign against the Serbian people". The achievement was also used for pre-election political liquidations, so the famous film director Srđan Dragojević, who praised the film and said that it belonged on the RTS, was called "Đilas's promoter" (Dragan Đilas is the leader of an opposition party). Dozens of texts and other media articles in the regime media accuse Đilas of being behind the "anti-Serb campaign" to show this film on RTS (1, 2, 3...). At the same time, Đilas, like most oppositionists from this civic side, never voiced his opinion on this film. Even actress Milena Radulović, who supported this film on social networks, was also victimized by the media. She was publicly insulted by, among others, the son of the infamous Željko Ražnatović Arkan, Veljko, who is a media personality in Serbia for some reason, and the media heartily reported it.

 

Although the independent media are portrayed in the regime's outlets as promoters of this "anti-Serbian film", it is an unequivocal fact that none of the alternative, non-regime television stations have so far shown interest in broadcasting this film in their program. 

 

 

True to his image as a person who is asked about everything and meddles in everything, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić also addressed the public about this film, saying that he "has no issue" with watching this film, but that he "doesn't have time" for it. "I think it is important that everyone has the right to say what they think and watch what they want, but it is important that we try to give up self-humiliation and the imposing of constant and collective guilt on the Serbian people, and I am proud of that... I watched Dara [from Jasenovac], it was financed by the Serbian state, while Aida was financed by Bakir Izetbegović," he said. With that, he was included among those who confidently rated a film they had not seen. It seems that, with this statement, he also answered the question if the film will be broadcast on RTS. It will not. 

 

Many knew that Vučić has the final say in whether Aida will be broadcast on RTS even before the director Jasmila Žbanić's statement. She recently confirmed that she spoke with people from the Serbian public media service about the possibility of showing this film. She was told that there is goodwill, but that they would first have to consult with the President of Serbia. She added that the boycott of this film in Serbia is a political decision and that she would not like to live in a country where the president decides which film will be broadcast on television and which will not!

 

RTS promptly responded with a statement in which it is claimed that neither Vučić nor Jasmila Žbanić can decide whether or not Aida will be shown, but rather the bodies of this public media service which should - by law - serve the public interest and ensure "respect and encouragement of pluralism of political, religious and other ideas and enable the public to be familiar with these ideas, not serving the interests of individual political parties and religious communities or any other individual political, economic, religious and similar viewpoint or interest". But the law is one thing, and its implementation in a country where there is no rule of law is quite another. 

 

The Regional Academy for Democratic Development, led by a former high-ranking official of the Democratic Party, Balša Božović, responded to RTS' announcement the same day. The Academy asked RTS what is the reason for refusing to broadcast the Quo Vadis, Aida?, which received the most prestigious European and global awards. "Since the leaders of RTS accused the director of this film of spreading disinformation when she announced that RTS must consult with Vučić about the screening of the most awarded film from this region, and strongly denied such allegations by Jasmila Žbanić - the Regional Academy for Democratic Development believes that this is an ideal opportunity for the management of RTS to inform the public of the real reason why this film was not broadcast on the public service of Serbia," the announcement stated.

 

The Regional Academy for Democratic Development is one of the non-governmental organisations that previously invited the Public Media Service of Serbia to broadcast this film. In December last year, they sent a letter to Dragan Bujošević, general director of the Radio Television of Serbia, and Vladimir Kecmanović, editor-in-chief of the cultural and artistic program, with an appeal for this film to find space on the program of the public media service so that the citizens themselves would have the opportunity to rate and evaluate it.

 

 

In an interview with Mediacentar Sarajevo, the director of the Regional Academy for Democratic Development Balša Božović said that the Serbian public media service is "obliged" to show the best European film "as it has done every year until now". "They did not explain why they skipped the established practice this time," said Božović.

 

He adds that the RTS should work as a public service in the interest of the citizens, and not be afraid of what President Vučić will tell them. "I'm not saying that Vučić banned them from broadcasting the film, but the idolatry of RTS is reminiscent of the attitude the media outlet had during the nineties towards the Serbian leadership at the time. Just when we thought things had changed, we are proven wrong. If citizens finance the RTS, then they have the right to get the opportunity to watch the best European film on the public service," Božović emphasized.

 

He pointed out that nationalism is on the rise, and that this is an additional reason why Serbian citizens should have the opportunity to watch this film. "The film leads to a confrontation with the past through an art form, which is the only medicine for rampant nationalism. The film changes the awareness of people who know nothing or little about what happened in Srebrenica. That's why the film has to be seen – because it presents the fate of a woman who tries everything to save innocent people, her family, her children.  A lot of friends from my personal circle had prejudices about the film amid the media hype until they saw it. Then, with tears in their eyes, they realized the weight we all have to deal with. That weight does not accuse, does not shift the blame onto the backs of us citizens or the Serbian people, as the regime media and government officials say, but heals us from blindness, prejudice, and the daily denial of the existence of a crime that did happen. And it was not committed by you or me, but by those who were convicted of it," Božović said. 

 

He believes that the government forbids the viewing of the film in Serbia because of its guilty conscience. "Someone does not want the citizens of Serbia to see what happened to our brothers and sisters in Srebrenica because they are afraid that, after watching the film, questions will be asked that will lead to those who supported that crime politically being held accountable, in the media, religiously...", he says.

 

Božović has no understanding for independent television stations that have a film program that did not consider the idea of airing Aida, either. "We live in a society of 'not getting on the wrong side’ of the protagonists of war and criminals. In other words - 'we should not interfere and take sides'. But when you don't take sides, you are often unwittingly or knowingly on the wrongdoer's side. Many do not want to get on the wrong side of nationalist hysteria. They would like to go to sleep in this mess of a country and wake up in Denmark. Well, that’s not possible. Each of us and each of the television stations bears responsibility for what they do or don’t do for this society. We attacked the public service because private television stations do not have the broadcasting obligations that the public service has. However, this does not mean that their film editors should not do it for the sake of the reputation of their media houses and because of their responsibility to citizens and viewers," says Božović. 

 

Božović does not have a clear-cut answer to the hypothetical question of whether this film would have been broadcast on RTS during the period when the Democratic Party was in power. "I can't say, because Tijanić was the director of RTS. However, I would have had the same attitude then as I do today. But many things were covered then. I’m not saying everything was perfect. The RTS has always been specific and exposed to a lot of pressure by all governments, and it is itself quite conservative. But there were opportunities to find out what happened in the wars of the 1990s, from testimonies at The Hague to showing the arrests of people accused of war crimes. Today, the RTS is once again a generator of nationalism, and it must not allow itself to play that role for the second time in its history," concludes Božović.

 

 

Jelena Kleut, a professor at the Department of Media Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad, has studied and researched the attitude of the Serbian media towards the war and war crimes of the 1990s on several occasions. She claims that Serbia has been working on "reconsolidating the narratives of those who fought and left terrible victims behind in the 1990s" and that "high government officials play a leading role in this".

 

"Some media outlets follow their lead by amplifying these narratives, polarising them further and trivializing recent history to the extreme. The other part of the media space ignores them or covers those topics routinely, thus confirming them. In this environment, the de facto ban on public, let alone televised screening of Quo Vadis, Aida? is saddening, but not surprising. This film does not fit into the matrix, it questions it and breaks it apart. However, it is not a threat to well-established prejudice and misinformation that have been nurtured for years. They are so strong and deep that it would be naive to think that even a superb film like Quo Vadis, Aida? could change them. That's why the refusal to show the film should rather be seen as arrogance and a demonstration of power of those who could show the film. Or the subservience of culture to politics. Either way, the result is the same," says Kleut.

 

The director Jasmila Žbanić said in an interview that the war of the 1990s will symbolically be over when the RTS public service stops serving war-mongering propaganda. "The citizens of Serbia, especially young people, who have no idea about what happened thanks to the RTS, should know about the crimes that they had nothing to do with because they weren't even born then. The criminals who committed them hide behind them and try to turn what they did into collective guilt. The RTS helps them in this. Young people need to know the truth in order to stop celebrating the criminals who are holding them hostage and they need to build a path to a common future so it wouldn’t come to another war," she said.