Czech filmmaker Victor Portel remembers vividly when he first heard about Vladimir Dzuro’s book, ‘The Investigator – Demons Of The Balkan War.’ A producer friend mentioned it to him, adding that Dzuro was coming to Prague in two or three days. She added that “the book is great, the story is marvellous and we should meet this guy.”
Portel rushed out to get a copy which he then read as fast as he could so he was prepared to meet its author. Dzuro was an ex-Prague detective turned International Criminal Tribunal investigator whose painstaking research had led to the arrest of a notorious war criminal from the former Yugoslavia.
“That’s how it started,” the director says. Now, his film about Dzuro, The Investigator, produced by Hana Blaha Šilarová of Frame Films, is premiering in Opus Bonum/Czech Joy at Ji.hlava IDFF. Vienna-based Filmdelights took on world sales duties just before the festival began.
Dzuro is a distinguished man. He works in a senior position at the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS). However, in spite of his status, he remains “a very simple man, very modest. He’s like a normal Czech guy, a normal Czech policeman with a strong feel for justice,” says Portel.
The film looks at its subject’s investigations into war crimes committed in former Yugoslavia during the 1990s.
Now in his early 30s, director Portel is too young to have paid much attention to the Balkan wars when he was a kid. It was something happening in the background. He has recollections of refugees coming to the Czech Republic but wasn’t following the conflict in any great detail.
The director admits to shock at some of the events the documentary uncovers. One witness who speaks to the filmmakers was involved in transporting evacuees on buses who were later to be massacred. This man talks about saving some of the victims – but others were killed in brutal fashion and he was powerless to help them. This testimony brought home the full horror of what happened during this period.
Portel recalls his dismay when he read the “Bosnian book of the dead,” which detailed in chilling fashion just how many thousands of people had lost their lives. The book was huge, and full of names and places. “That was the moment for me when I realised those stories we collected, those stories that Vladimir investigated, are only like tiny drops in what happened in Bosnia.”
The International Court in the Hague isn’t a perfect institution. Despite all the Court’s work on the Balkan wars, only a handful of perpetrators were finally convicted of their crimes. Nonetheless, the institution has a huge symbolic importance. It represents the possibility of justice.
Ironically, neither of the two cases featured in the documentary were successfully prosecuted. One alleged war criminal, Slavko Dokmanovic, hanged himself in his cell before a verdict had been reached in his case (which dealt with his role in a massacre in Vukovar, Croatia). The other, the notorious warlord, Željko Ražnatović, better known as ‘Arkan,’ was assassinated in a Belgrade Hotel.
“I think it is very personal for him,” the director says of how Dzuro regards these cases. “He spent almost 10 years working for the Tribunal. After that, he was catapulted to a high position in the United Nations. It was a great opportunity and he didn’t want to refuse it.” Nonetheless, the investigator’s regrets are apparent. He is now in a desk bound job in New York, no longer meeting victims’ families or investigating crimes. Portel suggests he has a feeling of “unfinished business.”
The filmmakers did their own old-fashioned detective work to track down some of their interviewees. For example, the widow of Slavko Dokmanovic was persuaded to appear on camera.
“In the beginning, we didn’t even know her name because it wasn’t anywhere, in any of the testimonies in the Hague,” the director remembers. “But in Serbia, there are still public phone books. So we found a Danilka Dokmanovic who was living in the same place where her husband was arrested 20 years before.” Her phone wasn’t working so the filmmakers turned up at her doorstep and rang the bell.
Having found Danilka, the next step was to persuade her she would be treated fairly. The filmmakers reassured her they weren’t apportioning blame. They just wanted to know how she felt about the Tribunal, more than 20 years after her husband’s death.
“You know, this festival journey is one thing but many more people will see the movie on TV,” the director reflects on how his documentary is likely to find its biggest audience. He is encouraged that Croatian Radiotelevision and Al Jazeera Balkans came on board the project late on during post-production. “That makes me sure the people in the former Yugoslavia will see the movie.” However, whether it will be shown in Serbia is not yet clear.
Dzuro (due in Jihlava for the premiere) has already seen several earlier cuts of the film. He is the film’s main protagonist but Portel was determined to include other perspectives beyond those of the investigator in the documentary.
“For us, it was very important to figure out how to tell the story. I didn’t want to do a movie about a Czech hero, Vladimir Dzuro, going back to the Balkans, hugging everyone,” the director says. He shot interviews with some of the other characters without Dzuro being present.
The film also has some of the flavour of a detective mystery. Dzuro is shown sticking up photographs of suspects.
Local fixers warned Portel that he was unlikely to be able to reach any of Arkan’s family members. The people around the warlord’s family were “like Serbian mafia.” Attempts at reaching them were therefore scrapped.
One advantage the director had was that he knew his producer Hana Blaha Šilarová from Frame Films so well. They’ve been friends “since elementary school…for a really long time.”
They may be working together again soon. The director is already hatching another project, about an aeroplane hijacking carried out by eight Czechs looking for asylum in the west in the early 70s. Portel’s focus will be on the personal stories behind the hijacking. This project, though, won’t be taking off for a while. “We are in the very beginning…pre-development!”
