Last night we went to a screening of the movie Storm (DK: Hannahs Valg) which tells the fictional story of a trial at the tribunal in The Hague and how the prosecutors struggle to ensure evidence, witnesses and at the same time make political bargains with the local government of the Balkans.

The conflict of the Balkans is not easy to understand – yet I think it is important that we try. This is a war that happened in our lifetime, right in the middle of Europe and with horrible war crimes of ethnic cleansing, genocide and rape camps.

I found the movie very interesting and it displays some of the dilemmas of trying to achieve justice for the atrocities while trying to rebuild the stability of the region and what one persons sacrifice mean in a bigger political game.

After the movie there was a panel debate with the former diplomat Charles Crawford, journalist Rajeshree Sisodia, Elena Wasylem from a rape victim help group and Lisa Gormley from Amnesty International. They all had some interesting inputs to the different themes of the film and put it into context. One of the things that they mentioned in the debate afterwards was that the bargaining and some of the actions of the barristers were quite unrealistic.

The film is a great example of European collaboration as it was created with funding from three countries and cast from at least eight.

Check out Ann’s blog post about the night as well 🙂

Update March 29th 2010: Charles Crawford wrote a nice piece on the film and the debate afterwards.