Željko Stanetić does not shy away from less-discussed topics about our wartime pasts, topics met with more silence than others. There can be great fear in discussing such issues, especially in societies where ruling cliques dictate the rules of the game. Talking about the past also forces people, as individuals and collectives, to face the traumas brought by war.

This is one of the reasons why art exists, and is why Stanetić made “Milena,” a film that tells the story of all those who, fleeing war, were forcibly conscripted into Serb military forces and those who were forcibly returned. One such story is that of Milena, the film’s protagonist, and her family, who are originally from Okučani, Croatia. After a few years of war, they decided to escape to Ruma, in Vojvodina, Serbia, fleeing from war and potential persecution as ethnic Serbs in a newly independent Croatian state dominated by nationalist ideologies.

A longtime activist from Novi Sad, Stanetić worked on issues of population displacement at the Vojvodina Civic Center, a nongovernmental organization. He made the documentary film “Nepodobni građani” — Citizens Out of Favor — about the Croat population’s expulsion from Vojvodina. “Milena” is his first feature film, and premiered at the March Festival in Belgrade. It was also screened in Los Angeles and will be shown at the Sarajevo Film Festival.

According to the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), mass mobilizations of recently arrived Serb refugees from Croatia began in January 1994, when roughly “3,000 refugees were handed over to RS military and police authorities and then sent to VRS (Army of Republika Srpska) positions in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” Mobilization increased in summer 1995, when 2,000 to 4,000 new arrivals were mobilized and taken to war zones under VRS control in Bosnia and SVK (Serbian Army of Krajina) control in Croatia.

Beyond his work as a filmmaker, Stanetić has worked with the Coalition for RECOM, a network of nongovernmental organizations from across the Balkans who advocate for the formation of a commission that would systematically interrogate all war crimes and human rights violations that occurred across former Yugoslavia from 1991 through 2001.

K2.0 caught up with Stanetić to discuss his switch from making documentaries to a feature film, forced mobilization in Vojvodina in the 1990s and lingering fear of warlord Željko Ražnatović — Arkan.

K2.0: Where did the idea to make a film about forcibly mobilized people come from? It’s not exactly a topic that the Serbian public has ever really engaged with.

Željko Stanetić: For years, there had been an idea about such a documentary film. The question was what kind of film it should be, how long it should be, but I knew I didn’t want another NGO film that would be viewed only in seminars. Then in 2019, I started playing around with writing the script, which is something I usually do, and it struck me to share it with colleagues experienced in filmmaking, not just documentaries, to gather their thoughts on the short film script. What actually followed was an incredible wave of positive feedback on the text. It was a storm of positive comments, and I realized that this film had to be made.

Through the Stolen Freedom project, in which you collected media reports about and interviewed forcibly mobilized people, and your work with the Coalition for RECOM, you gained a lot of knowledge on that topic. Was it helpful when preparing to work with the actors?

The story of forcibly mobilized individuals became personal to me at a very young age, as I had such cases in my family. I first encountered these forced abductions when I was around ten years old, though I didn’t fully understand them at the time. Later on, I engaged with this issue through my work with the Coalition for RECOM and the Vojvodina Civic Center. It was a multi-year process where I met people who had been forcibly taken, as well as their families. Eventually, I even wrote my journalism thesis on this topic in Novi Sad.

All of this brought me some dilemmas before I decided to take on the role of director, because my previous experience was primarily activist-oriented, focusing on human rights violations. I needed to transform and exhaust that experience so that the film wouldn’t just be another activist piece. Thankfully, I had good collaborators who pointed out key aspects that needed illumination, as well as what to discard and how to approach the whole project. Without that experience, I wouldn’t have dared to stand behind the film in the way that I did.

Who were these collaborators?

Primarily, my colleagues from the Vojvodina Civic Centre, who provided crucial support throughout the entire process, and my two colleagues who also served as co-producers of the film — Jelena Dukarić and Aleksandra Sučić. Slaven Rašković, as the executive producer, was my right-hand man throughout this journey. Miloš Milošević taught me incredible production tricks, despite my initial belief that I knew quite a bit about production. It turned out that all of these individuals brought something essential that this film needed. It was my first time directing a feature film, and I felt like I was learning throughout the entire process, thanks also to the experienced actors who have already had successful careers.

We rarely discuss the topic of forced mobilization, among all the issues we either do not address or perhaps better put, avoid, related to the 1990s and war crimes. Why?

This category is often the least covered, and when journalists ask me to find someone for them to interview, I struggle because initially, when these individuals wanted to share their stories, no one wanted to listen.

The fear still persists because many passed through Erdut, Croatia, where warlord Željko Ražnatović, or Arkan, ran a training camp. Arkan has long been deceased. How do you explain this fear?

The fear persists as if Arkan is still the most vivid and significant figure. But we must also speak about the intensity of the experiences these people endured. Very often, they will say that war and forced mobilizations were a normal thing. This attitude does not encourage them to speak about their own experiences, even though they were mistreated by the state where they sought refuge. 

We are talking about people who fled from Croatia or Bosnia and Herzegovina as late as 1995. So, they spent years in Croatia from the beginning of the war and witnessed it in its full horrific form. Then, at one point, unable to sustain life in such conditions, they attempted to escape and came to Serbia. Serbia then returned them in less than 48 hours, not to where they fled from, but to some other place where they never dreamed they would end up. They were mistreated not by an enemy, but by someone they considered their own, where they sought refuge. This has created immense confusion in their minds that persists to this day.

They are double victims. Through the film, you portrayed how discussing this topic is also a retraumatization.

According to what Serbia broadcasts as official information, these people are considered non-existent, even though many of them sued the state of Serbia until 2007, when they had the opportunity to do so with the HLC’s help. Many of them won their cases, but regardless, the state denies their existence, which further victimizes them. We must also not forget that a large number of forcibly mobilized individuals never returned from the war zone, so we only have the stories from their families. Many of them were never found, not even their bodies. I can’t say that those who did return are happy because I’m sure their experience was terrible, possibly even worse than the previous one they were escaping from.

The most common destination for them was Vojvodina, where you also partly set your film. They were also sent to Kosovo, but that’s a separate story. Let’s stick with Vojvodina. Why was Vojvodina specifically chosen? It’s as if they never felt it was sufficiently Serbianized?

It was somewhat natural because the borders of Vojvodina touch those of Bosnia and Croatia. The flow of people followed this path, but I would say it was also a strategy of the authorities at the time. It was crucial that they didn’t come to Belgrade, as they would have been most visible there, which would have undermined the narrative of the non-existence of that war and Serbia’s non-involvement in it.

Vojvodina has always been and remains a testing ground for displaying nationalism. I don’t know what future ambitions the authorities have for Vojvodina, but I hope they aren’t extensive and don’t lead to stirring up conflict among the population of Vojvodina, as we’ve seen several times. Fortunately, Vojvodina’s structure is so diverse that I believe the region can protect itself.

Why did you choose the title “Milena”? If we’re already talking about those forcibly mobilized, then we’re talking about men. Women and children were left in those new “homes.”

From the moment the screenplay was completed, my intention was to name the film that way. The name was inspired by my neighbor who fled Okučani in the 90s. I based the character of Milena on her. Additionally, my aunt experienced her husband’s forced mobilization, which was my first encounter with such an experience. Despite it being a male experience, I felt the need to tell it through a female character because women are often marginalized figures in war. We rarely hear their stories, and their wartime contributions are trivialized as they are perceived to have stayed home and cared for children. But what did they truly endure, what thoughts consumed them and with whom did they have to coexist after the war? 

All these aspects are taken for granted. In most cases, these women are the sole confidants on this planet of their husbands’ experiences. They comprehend the profound impact of these experiences on their spouses’ physical and mental well-being, continuing to share their lives with these men to this day. It’s a traumatic experience, and it became evident to me that this narrative deserved to be portrayed through the perspective of the wife of one of the forcibly mobilized individuals, rather than, as one might expect, through the mobilized person himself.

Women often were the ones making decisions about leaving, as Milena does, and the decision to leave was never an easy one.

We must not forget that this was a vastly different moment from the one in which you and I are now conversing, where we can make various decisions. Decisions were made in incredibly stressful and extreme circumstances, and they continued to determine your life, never knowing for sure whether those decisions were good or not. This is the situation countless families from the former Yugoslavia found themselves in when they were caught in the midst of wartime events.

In recent years, there has been a surge in films, both documentaries and feature films, for which the Humanitarian Law Center has played a pivotal role as a primary source of information. A few examples are: Ognjen Glavonić’s “Depth Two” and “The Load,” addressing crimes against Kosovo Albanians, along with your film. Nebojša Slijepčević’s “The Man Who Couldn’t Remain Silent,” depicting a day of atrocities against Bosniaks in Štrpci, even earned the Golden Palm. Has the time finally arrived to leverage this extensive archive through art?

I want to believe that due to the outstanding films we’ve seen recently, this trend will continue, allowing us to see more films that effectively explore our past. This will help us grasp the fragments and, hopefully at some point, provide context to everything that transpired during the wartime events in this region. It’s something that’s truly essential. Many young people feel there’s a constant focus on war, but it’s a narrative that’s manufactured for daily political needs, which are often superficial but not unexpected given the governments in the region. The HLC archives make anything possible. Those archives contain a wealth of information, and I deeply admire the individuals who compiled them and those who know how to harness their contents. I hope they will continue to be utilized to reveal the truth of what actually happened.

This article has been edited for length and clarity. The conversation was conducted in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian.

Feature Image: Still from “Milena.”

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