Video, colour, sound, 10 min.

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Shot in the Red Star sports stadium in Belgrade, the video documents a former football supporter as he recalls his recruitment from among the Red Star “Delije” supporters to the ranks of the Serbian paramilitary group, the Serb Volunteer Guard, or “Tigers”. At the time, the Delije (a word of Turkish origin meaning “valiant” or “courageous”) were notorious throughout Europe for their hooliganism at local and international matches. Both entities were headed by international career criminal Željko “Arkan” Ražnatović, who at the time received protection from criminal charges, both in Serbia and abroad, by the Serbian state authorities. The Serb Volunteer Guards stand accused of having committed some of the most brutal atrocities and ethnic cleansing in Croatia and Bosnia in the early to mid-1990s. Arkan was assassinated in Belgrade in 2000 before he could be bought to trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague. The testimony corroborates historical accounts of the role football played in the rise and channelling of inflammatory chauvinism into ethno-nationalism during the political breakup of Yugoslavia.

co-directed with Raphaël Grisey