Kosovo: Can You Imagine?

March. 15,2009      
Rating:
7.3
Trailer Synopsis Cast

Kosovo: Can You Imagine? is about the Serbs that live in Kosovo and the lack of human rights that they have today, in the 21st century. Most of the Kosovo Serbs have been ethnically cleansed by the Albanians who make up the majority of Kosovo. Kosovo has been under UN administration since 1999 when NATO bombed Serbia for 76 days to halt a crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatism in its province of Kosovo. In the years following the war, thousands of Serbs were expelled from their homes, kidnapped and killed. Their houses, cultural and religious sites were burned and destroyed. Kosovo for the Serbs is what Jerusalem is for the Jewish people. It is the cradle of their statehood, culture and religion. Most of the important Serbian Christian Orthodox monasteries are in Kosovo. Today, Serbs still have a deep spiritual and traditional connection to Kosovo, a land which is being cleansed of everything Serbian.

Reviews

ShangLuda
2009/03/15

Admirable film.

... more
FirstWitch
2009/03/16

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

... more
Loui Blair
2009/03/17

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

... more
Quiet Muffin
2009/03/18

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

... more
Horst in Translation ([email protected])
2009/03/19

"Kosovo: Can You Imagine?" is a Canadian half-hour documentary from 2009, so this one will have its 10th anniversary soon. This one was written and directed by Boris Malagurski, who was still incredibly young when he worked on this one and yes he is still making films today. A lot in here is not in the English language, so chances are high you will need subtitles. The Kosovo conflict was a subject that was present in the media for quite a while, also way before this film was made, but at some point it just disappeared almost completely and made room for subjects the media deemed more importand and worthy to report on. And all this with the issues here far from solved. It did not just lose attention, but completely vanished from the mainstream media, which is another example of how neutral reports are something you are not gonna find on television, papers etc. today. So even if this is far from a new film, we can be glad that Malagurski brought some attention back here on individual fates, but also the situation as a whole. I will not even deny that here and there the production values looked a bit cheap admittedly, but we also need to keep in mind where this was filmed and under which circumstances and that the filmmaker was quite a rookie at this point. All these facts (not excuses) make it easy to look beyond the flaws here and there and enjoy (not sure that is the right word) and appreciate this little severely underseen movie. I am also surprised that this one received zero awards attention apparently and that is fairly shocking, but can perhaps also be seen as a political decision. In any case, this is certainly among the best 2009 has to offer in short films and documentaries and I highly recommend checking it out. Big thumbs-up here. Go for it.

... more
John Jim Jack
2009/03/20

Serbian propaganda is known for producing such biased pseudo- documentaries with a clear chauvinistic agenda. This agenda with its roots in the ex Soviet Union's school of manipulating the truth for own political means.Shameful pieces of Serbian propaganda such as this can't hide the truth about war crimes perpetuated by Serbian paramilitary troopers and their secret police. According to the legally binding verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Federal Army and Serbian police after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia 24 March 1999, systematically attacked villages with Albanian population, abused, robbed and killed civilians, ordering them to go to Albania or Montenegro, burning their houses and destroying by their property. Within the campaign of violence, Albanians were mass expelled from their homes, murdered, sexually assaulted, and their religious buildings destroyed. Serbian forces committed numerous war crimes during the implementation of "joint criminal enterprise" whose aim was to "through the use of violence and terror, force a significant number of Kosovo Albanians to leave their homes, across the border, the state government to retain control over Kosovo". Ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population is performed by the following model: first the army surrounded a place, then followed the shelling, then the police entered the village, and often with them and the army, and then crimes occurs (murders, rapes, beatings, expulsions...).Presiding Judge Iain Bonomy was imposing sentence said, "deliberate actions of these forces during the campaign provoked the departure of at least 700,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo in the short period from late March to early June 1999."Incomplete list of massacres:Suva Reka massacre — 48 Albanian civilians victims, among them many children. Račak massacre — 45 Albanians villagers were murdered by Serb forces. Podujevo massacre - 19 Albanian civilians, including women, children and the elderly, killed by Serb paramilitary. Massacre at Velika Kruša — according to the Court, Serbian special police units murdered 42 persons. There is also allegetions of females mass raped. Izbica massacre — Serbian forces killed about 120 Albanian civilians. Drenica massacre — there were 29 identified corpses of massacre, committed by Serbian law enforcement forces. Gornje Obrinje massacre - 18 bodies were found, but more people slaughtered. Cuska massacre — 41 known victims. Bela Crkva massacre — 62 known victims Orahovac massacre — from 50 to more than 200 ethnic Albanian civilians victims Dubrava Prison massacre — Serbian prison guards killed more than 70 Albanian prisoners. Ćuška massacre near Peć on May 14, 1999 attributed to the ŠakaliGoran Stoparić, ex-member of Special Anti-terrorist Unit (SAJ), speculating about motives behind Podujevo massacre, said:"In my opinion, the only motive was the fact that the victims were Albanians, and perhaps because of some hidden immaturity or sickness of mind on their part. They would probably have killed them had they been Bosnians or Croats. But it is certain that they were killed because they were not Serbs".Number of victims in the Kosovo war 13,000 people killed, out of whom over 10,000 were Albanians. The true number of deaths continues to be disputed as the number of Albanian civilians still missing since the war reaches up to 3000.

... more
Mike Corbeil
2009/03/21

Putoestupido, I will say, has a fitting username. Stupido was the "quality" of his comment or so-called review.Scoottie wrote, "This documentary continues the great works that have documented the tragic genocide against the Serbs for many years. ...".Look for the more recent documentary by the same creator and director, the film, "The Weight of Chains (2010)", which is a little over two hours long. IMDb has a page for this more recent film, and SerbianYouthLeague uploaded the full video at YouTube. The director and creator of the film also posted an embedded copy at TV.GlobalResearch.ca.Boris Malagurski has been also working on trying to produce a sequel to the latter 2010 film and there's a trailer for it. The trailer, a little over two minutes long, indicates that it will be a very good documentary, if it can be ever completed. There's a funding issue and donations are needed to be able to complete the creation of the sequel, "The Weight of Chains 2". The trailer can be found at TV.GlobalResearch.ca, or directly at YouTube.For "The Weight of Chains (2010)", SerbianYouthLeague also uploaded some deleted portions at YouTube. People just need to search for "The Weight Of Chains | Deleted Scene". There're 3 deleted scenes, and they're each about two minutes long.There're many other videos. There's, f.e., the "TalkingStickTV - Michael Parenti - The U.S. War on Yugoslavia" video at YouTube. It's runtime is 1:17:27 and it was uploaded by the TalkingStickTV channel in 2008. It should be interesting. Michael Parenti is one of the dozen or so contributors for "The Weight of Chains (2010)", for which the official website is www.weightofchains.com. There's a Credits page, there, and I guess the brief biographies are for everyone who contributed as speakers in the film.And there're plenty of other videos regarding what the West has caused to Serbia and the Balkans.

... more
Movie Lover
2009/03/22

I watched this movie with my friends who knew little of what has happened in Kosovo since 1999, and I suggest you to do the same. The true story of Kosovo must come to the surface.In March 2004, I went to a local newspaper store as usual. None of the papers wrote about burning of the churches, ethnic cleaning and new Serbian refugees, like it never happened! The war in Kosovo was not only between Albanians and Serbs. Americans and Russians had their fights few miles from our house. Both were trying to overtake the airport. Many foreign countries had and still have their interest in Kosovo.There are so many other facts that this movie didn't covered, and I hope that the director Boris Malagurski, or somebody else will continue this work and tell the story of some of the top politicians in Kosovo today and their allies."The Winners Write The History", but that doesn't mean that the victims should keep quite. This is a great documentary, but it doesn't have any power unless many people have seen it. Especially people outside Balkan.Love, peace & faith refugee from Pristina '99

... more