In 1991, ethnic tensions between the Serbian minority and the Croatian majority in the region of Slavonia in eastern Croatia came to a head. Josip Reihl-Kir, chief of police of the city of Osijek, tirelessly mediated between the parties, who were already armed to the teeth. On 1 July 1991, he was assassinated on his way to a peace negotiation in broad daylight on the street, in front of dozens of eyewitnesses.
Croatian documentarist Ivan Ramljak analyses the circumstances that fostered an atmosphere of fear and the normalisation of open terror. His film makes no attempt to shed light on the unresolved details of the possible instigators of Reihl-Kir’s murder. Instead, he has produced a long-overdue monument to Josip Reihl-Kir as one of the last advocates for peace – in a region where perpetrators and war criminals still walk free, often holding political office and being celebrated as heroes. The meticulously researched early 1990s material from the Croatian television archive, some of which has never been broadcast before, is contrasted with current statements from five carefully selected contemporary witnesses in voice-over, opening up entirely new perspectives on the beginnings of the war in Slavonia. Ramljak balks at no taboo.