The Weight of Chains
Genres
Overview
The Weight of Chains is a Canadian documentary film that takes a critical look at the role that the US, NATO and the EU played in the tragic breakup of a once peaceful and prosperous European state - Yugoslavia. The film, bursting with rare stock footage never before seen by Western audiences, is a creative first-hand look at why the West intervened in the Yugoslav conflict, with an impressive roster of interviews with academics, diplomats, media personalities and ordinary citizens of the former Yugoslav republics. This film also presents positive stories from the Yugoslav wars - people helping each other regardless of their ethnic background, stories of bravery and self-sacrifice.
Details
Budget
$0
Revenue
$0
Runtime
125 min
Release Date
2010-12-17
Status
Released
Original Language
English
Vote Count
24
Vote Average
7.2
Rade Aleksic
himself
James Bissett
himself
Michel Chossudovsky
himself
Michael Parenti
Self
7.4
The Collaborator
During the conflict in the former Yugoslavia many soldiers were convinced to kill fellow citizens including friends and relatives in the name of patriotism. The Kolaborator follows the story of Goran, 24, a promising young soccer player who is forced to become a soldier. Goran goes from being a talented athlete to an executioner virtually overnight. Following orders, Goran lines up civilians, shoots them and drags them into mass graves. Justifying his role as a protector of his people, Goran becomes increasingly detached from the task until his soccer coach and life-long friend, Asim, is led in front of him. As a familiar face stands defeated before him, Goran must reconsider his actions and choose between his own life and that of his dear friend.
2007-01-01 | en
5.8
The Peaks of Zelengore
During the Battle of Sutjeska, partisan troops must endure 24 hours of big and heavy attacks on German units Ljubino grave, to the main Partisan units, with the wounded and the Supreme Headquarters, pulled out the ring that is tightened around them.
1976-01-01 | sh
8.0
The Other Side of Everything
For Serbian filmmaker Mila Turajlic, a locked door in her mother's apartment in Belgrade provides the gateway to both her remarkable family history and her country's tumultuous political inheritance.
2017-09-11 | sr
7.0
About the Art of Love or a Film with 14441 Frames
Godina was ordered to make a short film glorifying the army, but instead made a film about making love, not war. The censors hacked it up, but he managed to save one complete copy.
1972-02-14 | sh
7.4
Ulysses' Gaze
An exiled filmmaker finally returns to his home country where former mysteries and afflictions of his early life come back to haunt him once more.
1995-10-12 | el
7.5
War Photographer
Documentary about war photographer James Nachtwey, considered by many the greatest war photographer ever.
2001-11-01 | en
0.0
The Illness and Recovery of Buda Brakus
The protagonists of this docudrama are old farmers who migrated to Banat after the First World War, in 1922. The film is focused on a couple of important events in their impressive lives, which are woven into lively scenes and stories full of wise instances. Their statements become spontaneous recounts of the lives of people in this region.
1980-08-25 | sh
0.0
I Sing All Day, I Sing All Night
Zdravko Čolić is the biggest pop star in Yugoslavia. We follow him during his "Traveling Earthquake Tour", lerning who is the man behind the microphone, dancers, glittery suits... and in front of the audience.
1979-05-16 | sh
7.1
The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner
A study of the psychology of a champion ski-flyer, whose full-time occupation is carpentry.
1974-01-01 | de
3.0
Skopje '63
"Skoplje '63" is a 1964 Yugoslavian documentary film directed by Veljko Bulajić about the 1963 Skopje earthquake (Skoplje, per film title, is the Serbo-Croatian spelling of Skopje). The filming started three days after the earthquake and lasted for four months. After that, Bulajić spent 12 months editing the footage at Jadran Film studios.
1964-03-12 | sh
7.0
Bastards of Utopia
Three Croatian activists struggle to change the world. As children, they lived through the violent collapse of Yugoslavia. But now, amid the aftershocks of socialism's failure, they fight in their own way for a new leftism. In the middle of the struggle, a skeptical American is won over by their cause and even goes to jail with them. The activists, whether clashing with police or squatting in an old factory, risk everything to live their politics. But as the setbacks mount, will they give up the fight? The film, shot during years of fieldwork with a Croatian anarchist collective, applies EnMasseFilm's unique blend of observation, direct participation and critical reflection to this misunderstood political movement. Its portrayal of activism is both empathetic and unflinching -- an engaged, elegant meditation on the struggle to re-imagine leftist politics and the power of a country's youth.
2010-03-02 | en
0.0
Akademija the Republic
Akademija Republika shows a group of people gathered around the club from 1981 until 1995 and how it changed and influenced the cultural and night life around them.
1995-01-01 | sr
5.7
A Day Longer Than a Year
The film tells of devastating earthquake in Banja Luka in 1969 and follows a group of prisoners in prison during devastating earthquake and people and residents of Banja Luka. Fate of prisoners,the fate of the city and residents of Banja Luka, are light motive of this movie.
1971-03-28 | sh
7.3
Once Brothers
Drazen Petrovic and Vlade Divac were two friends who grew up together sharing the common bond of basketball. Together, they lifted the Yugoslavian National team to unimaginable heights. After conquering Europe, they both went to USA where they became the first two foreign players to attain NBA stardom. But with the fall of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day 1991, Yugoslavia split up. A war broke out between Petrovic's Croatia and Divac's Serbia. Long buried ethnic tensions surfaced. And these two men, once brothers, were now on opposite sides of a deadly civil war. As Petrovic and Divac continued to face each other on the basketball courts of the NBA, no words passed between the two. Then, on the fateful night of June 7, 1993, Drazen Petrovic was killed in an auto accident. This film will tell the gripping tale of these men, how circumstances beyond their control tore them apart, and whether Divac has ever come to terms with the death of a friend before they had a chance to reconcile.
2010-10-12 | en
7.2
Censored without Censorship
Through the conversation with Yugoslav film authors and excerpts from their films, this documentary film tells a story of a film phenomenon and censorship, and its focus is, in fact, a painful epoch of Yugoslav film called “a Black Wave”, which was the most important and artistically strongest period of Yugoslav film industry, created in the sixties and buried in the early seventies by means of ideological and political decisions. The film tells a great “thriller” story of the ideological madness which characterised the totalitarian psychology having left multiple consequences felt up to our very days. It stresses similarities between totalitarian regimes defending their taboos on the example of the persecution of the most important Yugoslav film authors. Those film authors have, however, made world careers and inspired many later authors. The film is the beginning of a debt pay-off to the most significant Yugoslav film authors.
2007-03-02 | sr
0.0
NATO Targets Yugoslavia
An anti-war documentary featuring original on-the-ground footage and interviews from the 1999 NATO war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Watch the 78 days of untold destruction, bombing bridges, hospitals, schools, and dropping up to 11 tons of depleted uranium across the country that NATO considers a successful “humanitarian intervention” in Yugoslavia. Filmmaker Gloria La Riva lifts the veil of imperialist propaganda to reveal the humanitarian crisis caused by the war.
1999-12-31 | en
5.0
Special Trains
The story of a group of Yugoslavian "guest-workers" on their train journey to Germany. At Munich's main station, they land up in a basement. When they register, their names are replaced by numbers.
1972-01-10 | sh
0.0
The Scorpions, A Home Movie
The Scorpions were a Serbian paramilitary unit that gained notoriety for their involvement in war crimes during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. By using the statements of former members of the Scorpions unit, and the materials recorded by the unit itself in the course of its campaignes, this film demonstrates the functioning of a typical combat unit organized by the security service to do dirty jobs in the Balkan wars. Including their treatment of Bosnian Serbs; from refusing them water to the stomach-wrenching murders of six Bosnian Muslim men, some of whom were minors, in Srebrenica in July 1995. Archival footage used in this film includes materials of Humanitarian Law Center, International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia.
2007-04-10 | sr
0.0
Freedom from Despair
True stories of the Croatian People's struggle to overcome oppression from communist Yugoslavia and the 1990's fight to save their war ravaged homeland.
2004-10-05 | en
6.0
Who Is This Kusturica?
Emir Kusturica views himself as a rock musician and believes that he became a world-famous filmmaker by pure chance, as he shoots his movies only in between concert tours with the “No Smoking Orchestra” band. At these little pinpoints of time he gets “Palms d’Or” at Cannes, “Golden Lions” in Venice, builds his own villages, a power plant and a piste and regrets not becoming a professional football player. Kusturica’s own living is very much similar to his movies, where shoes are polished with cats, death is treated like a story from tabloid press, and life is a miracle...
2013-08-23 | ru