The Tears of Tito

Trauma psychologist Iva Bicanic travels through her parents' country, the former Yugoslavia. Iva mainly knew the glittering coasts of Croatia from the long summer holidays with her family.

Slovenia was the first republic to leave Yugoslavia. Compared to the other countries, Slovenia came out fairly unscathed. But behind the impressive green mountains and in the deep forests, a much older wound seems to be tearing Slovenia's society apart. Iva discovers that paramilitaries are guarding the borders, sees how partisans still worship Marshal Tito and works in a vegetable garden with a young communist.

After the wars of the 1990s, the Serbs were seen as the perpetrators of much grief, but the country itself also lost a lot: a battle against the Ottomans, territories, people and their beloved Kosovo. How does a country deal with so much loss? In a traditional Serbian restaurant, Iva is told why she is more Dutch than Balkan, she receives a passport from mini-Yugoslavia and joins a war veteran who took up arms in Vukovar, the place where one of her Croatian holiday friends lost his life.

In Kosovo, the war is fresh and the divisions are great. Is the country ready to leave the past behind for a new future? To find out, Iva visits a small village school. The Serbs and Albanians share the building. However, in the morning the Serbian children are taught and in the afternoon the Albanian children come for education. She descends precariously into a silver mine and searches for an old army friend of her late father's… and finds him.

The Montenegrins are often described as the most beautiful people in the former Yugoslavia, but also as warriors. They kept the Ottomans out. Now that the wars are over, they stick to their warrior spirit. But also their sense of honor. Iva explores the centuries-old tradition of honor killings and vendettas, in which family honor is more important than human life. And she seeks it higher, because whoever wants to really understand the Montenegrin has to go to the top of the black mountain.

Ever since the North Macedonians peacefully split off from Yugoslavia, they seem to be looking for an identity of their own. The neighboring countries make that difficult, they think that Macedonia is stealing something from them: the language, the culture, the history. Iva helps search for the identity of the Macedonian, but finds 'old' statues made of styrofoam and young people who would rather go abroad for good... Or does the Macedonian exist? At an old folk dance society, Iva feels Yugoslav times revived.

Bosnia and Herzegovina was also known as Yugoslavia within Yugoslavia. Different ethnicities lived together and there were many mixed marriages. Maybe that's why the war left so much pain and trauma here? Is there anything left of the brotherhood of Tito's Yugoslavia?