The Investigator

CZ/HR 2022, 74 min, Viktor Portel

Former investigator of The Hague Tribunal returns to the Balkans, to places where the war crimes were committed nearly 30 years ago. Can justice be brought from the outside?

Vladimír Dzuro is the first Czech investigator to have worked for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. He collected evidence against war criminals and hunted perpetrators of ethnic cleansing. The two biggest cases include the Ovcara massacre related to Vukovar's mayor Slavko Dokmanovic, and the ethnic cleansing committed by the warlord Željko Ražnatovic Arkan. We join Vladimír Dzuro on his metaphorical and real journey across the places of investigation in the former Yugoslavia and meet some survivors of these cases. What is the landscape of the Balkans, which saw a fratricidal conflict twenty-five years ago, like today? What happened to the people who still live there and to their memory? What is the significance and meaning of justice brought from the outside?

The film is inspired by Vladimir Dzuro’s bestselling book The Investigator – Demons of the Balkan War (Grada, 2017, and Potomac Books, 2019).