The documentary film “Sarajevo Safari” by Slovenian author Miran Zupanič was screened as part of the “AJB Screening” program at the fifth AJB DOC Film Festival.
The Kovači Multimedia Center hosted the world premiere of the film Sarajevo Safari by Slovenian author Miran Zupanič, which was followed by a conversation between the author and the audience.
Slovenian director Miran Zupanič, whose story about the morbid “hunting” of living people, told in the film “Sarajevo Safari”, shocked the public, explains in an interview before the premiere that even he couldn’t believe it when he first heard about the “hunting” done by the rich and influential foreigners, who paid do go on a killing spree from the Serb military positions, targeting already suffering people in the besieged Sarajevo during the last war.
The film tells a brutal story about the little-known phenomenon of “manhunting”, that is, rich foreigners who paid a lot of money for the opportunity to shoot at the citizens of besieged Sarajevo, and because of its intriguing subject, this film attracted great interest of the public and the media, weeks before the screening.
“The ‘Sarajevo safari’ was a specific, unimaginable type of hunting – manhunting. During the siege of Sarajevo, rich foreigners who paid a certain amount of money were allowed to shoot from the Serb positions at people in the free part of the city. The victims were civilians who found themselves in the crosshairs of the snipers of those cruel foreigners,” Zupanič explained.
As he pointed out, he first heard about this phenomenon in 2019, which still remains shrouded in secrecy.
In disbelief, at first, he did not even think of making a film about the “safari”, as he ironically called it, until he heard witnesses whose statements seemed credible to him. Some of them stood in front of the film cameras and some did not want to.
“At the beginning, I was in shock, horror and surprise when producer Franci Zajc told me that story; I couldn’t believe it, but it turned out he had a witness, so I talked to him. He was Slovenian, worked for an important American agency and was in the field during the war and personally witnessed it. He didn’t shoot, but he was a kind of ‘observer’, let’s put it that way. My first impulse was a shock, but at the same time, it was so convincing that I would have felt like a coward if I hadn’t pursued it further. My colleague Franci Zajc searched further in Bosnia, and since he had very good contacts because we had already filmed here during the war, another gentleman enters the story, Edin Subašić, a retired officer of the intelligence service of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who analyzed a case that referred to the “safari”. So, now we already had two witnesses,” Zupanič says and adds that he wouldn’t even do the film if there was only one witness.
In the further search, more witnesses appeared, they said they would speak, but unfortunately they changed their minds, the director points out.
“After that, I decided that there will be nothing in the film other than witnesses and victims, so only testimonies. Apart from the mentioned Slovene, the characters are seen in the film, and their names are listed at the end,” explains the director ahead of the premiere of “Sarajevo Safari”.
The work on the film lasted three and a half years, and most of that time was taken up by the search for witnesses. Time passed and waiting for the consent of the witnesses, who in the end changed their minds, explains Zupanič.
When asked if he was dealing with a message in the film or mere arguments about a phenomenon unimaginable to common sense, he replied that he would like everyone to extract a message for themselves, and in his opinion, as a precaution, we should all think together about the limits to which human evil can reach.
The foreigners who shot live targets in the besieged city came, according to one source, from Canada, the United States of America and Russia, and according to another, from Italy, whether they were Italians or people for whom that country was just a route.
According to the testimony of two witnesses, their starting point on the way to Sarajevo was Belgrade and, according to one source, they were transported by helicopter, and according to another, by road transport.
Reflecting on the profile of people ready for such horror, the director points out that they must be beings beyond morality and ethics. Besides being rich, they were probably very socially influential people.
“Because if you’re just rich or a psychopath or, for all I know, a member of some caste, that’s one thing. However, I think that these people must have some kind of influence, some kind of social power,” said Zupanič.
The creators of the film do not know the identity of the killers, and even if they did, the film would not include them; that is more a matter for investigative bodies, emphasizes Zupanič and adds that the point is to discover a phenomenon on a global scale, which encourages thinking about what are the values that hold the community together as a human entity and what breaks it as such an entity.
For the world premiere of the film, he specifically chose Sarajevo, firmly convinced that it is most appropriate to first talk about the morbid “hunt” right there at the place of the victims. Sarajevo audience is the one that should judge the film and his work as the director.
