Journalist and publicist Enver Robelli has reacted to the film "Kill Me Today, Tomorrow I'm Sick!" which was broadcast on German public television ARD, saying that it is distortion, prejudice, propaganda, and even racism.
Robelli also points out that the film distorts the history of the war in Kosovo.
Read tIn full, without interference, Robelli's Facebook post:
Distortion, prejudice, propaganda, even racism: on a film about Kosovo shown on German public television ARD
The German film critic magazine "Kino-Zeit" ("Cinema Time") in a review of the film "Kill Me Today, Tomorrow I'm Sick!" ("Kill Me Today, Tomorrow I'm Sick!") writes in the introduction: "Joachim Schroeder, known for his documentary films, is trying to make a feature film with Tobias Streck about Kosovo and the peacekeeping missions that came to the country after the war - will they succeed?"
I watched this film last night in the media library of the German television ARD and the answer is: the film's authors not only fail, but have managed - in 2018! - to produce a deeply prejudiced and propagandistic film, which distorts the history of the war in Kosovo. Racist clichés are also used in abundance. Kosovo Albanians treat women like animals. Even worse: they are Muslim and almost all of their women are veiled. The former rebels, praised as liberators, run a slaughterhouse where they remove the organs of Serbian civilians and take them to Budapest for sale. So claims the film.
The war crimes committed by the Serbian state against the Albanian civilian population are not mentioned at all. The German magazine “Kino-Zeit” rightly writes: “It is a sin, above all, that the initially important narrative about the attacks on minorities in post-war Kosovo is thus left aside, but also the previous atrocities of the war and Serbia's colonialist policy towards the inhabitants of Kosovo - which are almost completely ignored in the film.”
The actors are from the German-speaking area, Serbian or of Slavic origin from the former Yugoslavia. The film was shot in Novi Pazar and South Tyrol. The actors do not speak Albanian. Therefore, when they speak Albanian, they sound like they have stones in their mouths.
The story is set in Kosovo in 1999, just after the end of the war, when international organizations land in Pristina. At the center of the film is Anna Neubert, an OSCE employee who arrives with the idealism of a “Western savior,” convinced that interethnic hatred can quickly disappear.
However, her enthusiasm fades as soon as she is confronted with the reality on the ground. She notices that the mission is not working as planned: violence against Serbian civilians continues, while the OSCE seems uninterested in investigating these cases or holding local powerful figures accountable (like the character Rhaci, who resembles Hashim Thaçi; his role is played by Serbian actor Boris Milivojević). Anna begins to deeply suspect the mission and the people around it, who turn out to be corruptible and far from the ideals they proclaim. They either end up with a prostitute, or spend their time telling sexist jokes.
Germany Anna Neubert helps her driver Plaka (Carlo Ljubek, a German actor with Croatian parents) open a multi-ethnic radio station, whose journalists are attacked with guns by a close associate of "Commander Rhaci." When he's not killing, the associate has sex in the bathroom of a Pristina bar with an OSCE international, whom he then kills in cold blood - in the bathroom.
In this film, it is implied that Albanians have staged the victims of the war and bear the blame for the destruction of Yugoslavia. A photograph of Josip Broz Tito is carried from scene to scene as false evidence of the Yugoslav paradise.
I am finally quoting the German magazine "Kino-Zeit" again, which concludes its criticism with this fair observation: "Kill me today, Tomorrow I'm sick! sadly represents precisely the hegemonic behavior of the West towards the Balkans, which it supposedly tries to criticize. Thus, for example, the German characters appear with their first and last names - while this is naturally denied to the Serbian and Albanian figures, as if it were nothing special. This is equally noticeable in the production, in the image politics and in the jokes and often shallow characters, who serve more as examples for entire ethnicities or religions, than as real film characters, whose actions are motivated by their character."
The film has been in the ARD media library for days. Last night, the online screening deadline ended. This film, which claims to be artistic, looks like an extension of the ARD’s 2001 so-called documentary “It Started with a Lie” (“Es begann mit einer Lüge”), in which the history of the Kosovo war was distorted and German politicians were accused of being liars who deceived the public in order to secure parliamentary support for NATO attacks on Serbia. It is no surprise that Slobodan Milosevic happily cited this documentary in his trial in The Hague. /Telegraph/
