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The screening was followed by a debate involving BIRN reporter Marija Ristic, who worked on the film, video editor Nemanja Babic and BIRN Regional Development Officer Petar Subotin. 

The seventh annual BELDOCS festival, which runs from May 8-14, sees 34 recent documentary films from around the world screened at various locations around the city.

BIRN’s film was screened in the festival’s programme section entitled ‘Beldocs Supports’. 

BIRN documentary is available to buy at www.balkaninsight.com/en/page/dvd-documentary-majority-starts-here  

The investigation by journalists from BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice project examined school textbooks and gathered opinions from experts and parents in five Balkan countries – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia. It is being published in Albanian, Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian and Macedonian as well as English on the Balkan Transitional Justice website.

The article immediately drew around 140 comments from readers of The Guardian after appearing on the newspaper’s website, which is one of the most popular and well-respected news site in the world.

The Guardian readers took part in intense debates about whether Gavrilo Princip, whose assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 helped to spark the outbreak of WWI, should be seen as a freedom fighter or a terrorist – echoing the issues raised by the textbooks in the various former Yugoslav countries which were the focus of BIRN’s investigation.

They also debated what impact the 1990s conflicts have on teaching in schools in the various former Yugoslav countries.

Some praised BIRN’s cross-border collaborative reporting methods.

“Great article, and a very interesting collaborative approach. The comparative perspective both from country to country and across time (1914-1990s-now) is fascinating and thought-provoking. Well done to the various contributors,” one reader posted in the newspaper’s comments section.

See the full BIRN investigation.

The initial seminar serves as an opportunity for team building and for coaching, as fellows are provided with professional training and tailored advice for each reporting project. They will receive guidelines in research planning, cross-border reporting and long-form story structuring.

The reporters selected earlier this year from a pool of 162 applicants will cover issues including migration, corruption, business and family life. They will supplement information gathered in their own countries with material from trips to at least two other countries. Their stories represent diverse and original takes on this year’s topic, Generations.

The seminar will be led by the new editor of the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence, Andrew Gray, who has been a journalist for two decades. Before going freelance, Andrew spent 15 years at Reuters, including assignments as a war reporter, Pentagon correspondent and bureau chief for the Balkans.

The programme was established in 2007 and provides 10 journalists annually with training and mentoring, as well as the financial resources to travel and carry out research, in order to produce long investigative or analytical stories that are important for the region’s development.

As of this year, the programme is supported by the ERSTE Foundation, Open Society Foundations and the Prague Freedom Foundation.

 

The fellows from eight countries across the region introduced themselves and their projects to the group at the three-day seminar and took part in workshops on planning, reporting, writing and producing photographs for their fellowship stories.

The reporters also discussed their stories in depth in individual sessions with the BIRN editorial team of Gordana Igric, Ana Petruseva, Dragana Zarkovic Obradovic and fellowship editor Andrew Gray.

The fellows, selected earlier this year from a pool of 162 applicants, will cover issues including migration, corruption, business and family life. Their stories represent diverse and original takes on this year’s topic, Generations.

They will supplement information gathered in their own countries with material from foreign reporting trips.

As part of the seminar programme, the fellows visited the offices of Austrian media partner Der Standard and attended an editorial planning meeting. Ten Der Standard journalists later joined the fellows for dinner to share knowledge and tips.

The seminar was held in the central Vienna offices of Erste Foundation, with representatives from fellow programme partners the Open Society Foundations and Prague Freedom Foundation also attending.

The programme received a record 162 applications for 2014. Many were of a very high standard, making the final choice extremely difficult.

The programme’s selection committee evaluates applications based on the relevance, feasibility and originality of the proposals, as well as the applicants’ professional qualifications, motivation and journalistic approach. The committee is comprised of seven senior media figures from the Balkans and around Europe.

BIRN thanks all the applicants and encourages those who were not successful to consider applying again next year.

Here are the fellows for 2014, listed alphabetically by surname:

• Jeta Abazi, Kosovo
• Boryana Dzhambazova, Bulgaria
• Konstantinos Kallergis, Greece
• Marija Knežević, Croatia
• Branko Krivokapić, Montenegro
• Tanja Matic, Serbia
• Marija Mitevska, Macedonia
• Dragana Pećo, Serbia
• Lina Vdovîi, Romania
• Krasimir Yankov, Bulgaria

BIRN regional director Gordana Igric, BIRN Kosovo director Jeta Xharra, BIRN Kosovo director and Balkan Insight managing wditor Ana Petruseva participated in a debate after the screening hosted by Bojan Alekson, lecturer in south-east European history.

Among the other guests were Lirim Greiçevci, Kosovo’s ambassador to London, a representative of Amnesty International and students of Slavonic and East European studies at UCL.

BIRN documentary is available to buy at: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/page/dvd-documentary-majority-starts-here   

The producers of the film, BIRN regional director Gordana Igric, BIRN Kosovo director Jeta Xharra and Balkan Insight managing editor Ana Petruseva, were in Oxford for the screening and took part in a panel discussion afterwards chaired by professor Kalypso Nicolaidis.

Gordana Igric explained that the main idea behind the film was to discover how much young people knew about the past and gauge the prospects of them becoming the creators of a better future. The production team said they only realised during the screenings of the movie how little knowledge there is in the region about the suffering of other ethnic groups, which is a major obstacle in overcoming the experiences of the war.   

Regarding the actual making of the movie, Ana Petruseva said that the production team simply wanted to see “what is going to happen when six people from these six countries end up stuck in a minivan for several weeks”.

Jeta Xharra explained that only the participant from Kosovo was over 25 because it was necessary to find someone older who understood at least some Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian so that they would not feel like an outcast among the others who shared the same or very similar languages.

 

More than 160 journalists from 10 eligible countries applied for the 2014 fellowship programme under the topic of GENERATIONS.

The decision on participants in the programme will be reached based on the following criteria:

Article proposal – Relevance/ Feasibility/ Originality

Candidate – Professional qualifications/ Motivation/ Journalistic approach

The Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence partners thank all applicants for their interest in the programme and the effort invested in the application process and are also grateful to everyone who helped spread the word about the fellowship across the region.

The results of the selection will be announced on March 28 on the Balkan Fellowship programme web site.