Films

Former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic was the first incumbent head of state in history to be indicted by an international tribunal. His trial before the Hague Tribunal began in 2001 and lasted four years, rehashing the most disturbing aspects of the crimes perpetrated during the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia, where three million people were displaced, 125,000 were killed, and the European community faced the reality of mass graves and ethnic cleansing for the first time since World War II.

Director Michael Christoffersen documented the entire serpentine path of the trial. His exclusive access not only to the courtroom but the key attorneys resulted in more than 2,000 hours of courtroom footage and 250 hours of interviews. In Milosevic On Trial, he distills it masterfully into an unflinching look at the savagery of war and the trail of misery left in its wake. The proceedings are both weighty and dramatic. Milosevic is confident and staunch in his refusal of a court-appointed attorney on the grounds that the trial is illegal. A key witness for the prosecution changes testimony mid-trial. Heartbreaking video footage surfaces. Christoffersen handles all of the material adeptly, cutting from the courtroom to evidence-gathering in the field and back. Geoffrey Nice QC, the British attorney and lead prosecutor racing against time to make his case, and Dragoslav Ognjanovic, Milosevic’s lawyer and friend who worries over the failing health of the man he calls a hero, face off in compelling interviews throughout. With Milosevic on Trial, Christoffersen presents a spellbinding glimpse into the mechanics of the burgeoning international court system, born from the Nazi-prosecuting Nuremberg trials.

The first conviction for genocide. The first conviction of rape as a war crime. With exclusive behind-the-scenes footage, the film follows the trial of Jean-Paul Akayesu and his role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which 800,000 people were killed in just 100 days. Jean-Paul Akayesu was once a respected mayor of a village in Rwanda but now faces trial for genocide and crimes against humanity at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania.

Deep in the Peruvian rainforest, a policeman is killed. The government rounds up the usual suspects and picks out indigenous leaders as murderers and terrorists. But no one has actually witnessed who fired the gun and even fewer care about the torture and the following revenge murder carried out by the police. The indigenous are poor and despised, so their chances of winning a courtroom battle are next to none. But a young indigenous leader, Fachin, refuses to give in. He contacts a well known Peruvian defence lawyer who specialises in indigenous cases and starts fighting back!