The Investigator

Vyšetřovatel / Istražitelj

About film

Vladimír Dzuro, is the only Czech investigator to have worked for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. His task was to collect evidence against war criminals and perpetrators of ethnic cleansing. His two biggest cases were the Ovcara massacre, linked to then-Vukovar Mayor Slavko Dokmanovic, and ethnic cleansing in northwestern Bosnia. Together with Dzuro, we embark on a metaphorical, but also very realistic tour of the site of his investigations in the former Yugoslavia and a meeting with surviving witnesses of ethnically motivated crimes. What does the Balkans look like today, where the conflict took place twenty-five years ago? What happened to the people who still live in those places today, what about their memory? And finally most importantly, did ‘Hague justice’ have any meaning and significance for those who went through the worst?

The film is inspired by Vladimir Dzuro’s book ‘The Investigator – Demons of the Balkan War’, published in 2017 in the Czech Republic as ‘Vyšetřovatel – Démoni balkánské války a světská spravedlnost’ by Grada Publishing, in 2019 in the USA by Potomac Books and in Croatia in 2023 by Croatian Institute of History.

Director and screenwriter: Viktor Portel
Idea: Martina Šantavá
DOP: Šimon Dvořáček
Editor: Vladimir Gojun
Sound designer: Dominik Dolejši
Re-recording mixer: Štěpán Mamula
Sound recordists: Filip Ledinšćak, Niko Gulam
Composers: Dominik Dolejší, Adam Levý

Producer: Hana Blaha Šilarová (Frame Films)
Co-producer: Oliver Sertić (Restart)
Creative producer (Czech TV): Martina Šantavá
Executive producer (CzechTV): Roman Blaas
Production managers: Karolína Fránková, Suzana Erbežnik
Associate producer: Vanja Jambrović
Production: Frame Films (CZ)
Co-production: Restart (HR), Czech TV (CZ), Croatian Radiotelevision (HR), Al Jazeera Balkans
In association with Post Bellum (CZ)

Languages: Czech, Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, English

 

 

Presented at:

Viktor Portel is the director of documentary films and the head of the documentation department of Post Bellum o.p.s. where he works as the producer and dramatugist of the audiovisual content called ‘Memory of the Nation’. Recent projects are, for example, the exhibition ‘Memory of the Nation’ (2018) in the basement of the former Stalin’s monument, the installation Trabi (Signal festival 2019) or the screening ‘Memory of the Nation: 1989 presented on the 30th Anniversary of the Velvet Revolution’. As a trainer, he tries to help start documentary projects in places where remembrance is not easy (Russia, Burma, Cuba). He is the author and the director of a large part of the television series ‘Stories of the 20th Century’. For his film ‘The Heart of Havel’ (2013), he won the 1st Czech Press Photo Awards in the Online News and Reportage category. He graduated from the Department of Documentary Filmmaking at FAMU, Prague, Czech Republic.

The Investigator

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.