The Death of Yugoslavia

Released: 1995-09-03

Runtime: 50 minutes

Episode Overview

Nationalist feelings are let loose in Yugoslavia. Especially in Kosovo Serb nationalist are pressing the central authority. Milosevic starts out in Tito's spirit trying to deal with the problems without acknowledging the Kosovo-serbs claim that the troubles are ethnic related, but soon finds that he can build his power base faster by supporting the Serb nationalists and play this against the sitting president of the Yugoslav federation. Rumours of attacks on Serbs in Kosovo increases ethnic frictions. The rethoric between Milosevic in Belgrade and the regional authorities in Kosovo, Croatia and Slovenia gets harsher.

Series Overview

The Death of Yugoslavia is a BAFTA-award winning BBC documentary series first broadcast in 1995. It covers the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. It is notable in its combination of never-before-seen archive footage interspersed with interviews of most of the main players in the conflict, including Slobodan Milošević, the then President of Serbia. Norma Percy won the 1996 BAFTA TV Award for 'Best Factual Series' for the documentary. However, it has been argued that it presents a potentially slightly biased point-of-view; for instance during the trial of Milošević before the ICTY in The Hague, Judge Bonomy called the nature of much of the commentary "tendentious" (partisan).