More than a decade after the turbulent disintegration of the Yugoslavian Republic, its former citizens are beginning to question not only the reasons behind the bloody conflicts of the 1990s, but also the true motives behind US and NATO intervention during the civil wars.

‘Who in their right mind would actually want to be a colony?’ asks director Boris Malagursk, who blames a Western expansionist impulse for the brutal reduction of Former Yugoslavia – a ‘success story of Market Socialism’ according to economist Michel Chossudovsky – to a series of indebted and divided states.

Seeing an opportunity in the death of Yugoslavian political hero Josip Tito in 1980, the US embarked upon a sustained program of ‘predatory capitalism’ in the region. By first bankrupting the country, and then inciting its composite republics to declare independence in exchange for wads of US cash, the fervent nationalism and ethnic cleansing that ensued were inevitable.

However, in the years leading up to the 1990, such inter-ethnic hatred was almost unheard of. In previously unseen footage, Serbian and Muslim neighbours who lived alongside each other harmoniously for years are forced to part ways as new US-implemented divisions of Bosnia take effect. Indeed, the sustained dismantling of Yugoslavian society in conjunction with the destruction of its infrastructure ensured that, when peace was finally declared in 1999, American and NATO forces were able to implement economic and ideological colonialism under the guise of valiant human rights intervention.

And now, as Kosovo is still denied international recognition of statehood, and as Croatia is considering selling off its islands in a desperate bid to pay back ever-increasing debts to the US, citizens of the former Yugoslavia are becoming increasingly wary of the true cultural and economic cost of European integration.