„Krieg vor Gericht“ blickt auf ein einzigartiges Experiment in der Geschichte der Justiz: den Internationalen Strafgerichtshof für das ehemalige Jugoslawien in Den Haag.

In „Krieg vor Gericht“ kommen Opfer, Täter und Ankläger zu Wort. Unter ihnen sind Überlebende der Massenexekutionen von Srebrenica und dem Kosovo sowie Staatsanwälte, die den serbischen Präsidenten Slobodan Miloševic und den ehemaligen bosnisch-serbischen General Ratko Mladić angeklagt haben.

Einer der Zeitzeugen ist Esad Landžo, ein ehemaliger KZ-Wächter, der wegen Folter und Mordes verurteilt wurde. Er erinnert sich an seine Taten und spricht über seine Zeit im Gefängnis. Die bosnisch-serbische Nationalistin Biljana Plavšic ist während des Krieges Vizepräsidentin der Republika Srpska unter Präsident Radovan Karadžic. Sie ist die einzige Frau, die vom Internationalen Strafgerichtshof für das ehemalige Jugoslawien verurteilt wurde.

In „Krieg vor Gericht“ erzählt Plavšic, dass sie sich nur schuldig bekannt habe, um ein milderes Urteil zu erhalten. Sie hält den Internationalen Strafgerichtshof für eine Farce und eine „antiserbische Institution“. Insgesamt bekennen sich nur 20 der 161 Angeklagten schuldig.

Saranda Bogujevci überlebte das Massaker an ihrer Familie während der serbischen Militäraktion im Kosovo. Mirsada Malagic, eine bosnische Muslimin, verlor ihren Mann und ihre Kinder in Srebrenica. Beide sagten als Zeuginnen in Den Haag aus. Viele der Angeklagten erkennen die Legitimität des Strafgerichtshofs nicht an. Einer von ihnen ist der ehemalige serbische Präsident Slobodan Miloševic. Der Prozess gegen Slobodan Miloševic bleibt durch seinen plötzlichen Tod unvollendet. Die Festnahmen der beiden meistgesuchten Angeklagten Radovan Karadžic und General Ratko Mladic, die unter anderem des Völkermords von Srebrenica beschuldigt werden, geben den Opfern ein Gefühl von Abschluss und Gerechtigkeit.

„Krieg vor Gericht“ beleuchtet die Widerstände, die den Internationalen Strafgerichtshof bei seiner Suche nach Gerechtigkeit behindert haben und beschäftigt sich mit den Auswirkungen der Prozesse auf die beteiligten Menschen. Auch wenn die Urteile keine Versöhnung bewirken, bringen sie die Wahrheit über den ersten Völkermord in Europa seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg ans Licht und zeigen, dass Kriegsverbrechen nicht ungesühnt bleiben dürfen.

Eine Lektion, die in einer Zeit, in der die internationale Justiz von den mächtigen Nationen der Welt wie beispielsweise den Vereinigten Staaten boykottiert wird, umso wichtiger ist.

In this series we look at the past 40 years of Afghan history through the individual perspectives of men and women, who played a decisive role or had a unique point of view on these events, to understand the journey of this nation from paradise to hell.

In the early 70s, Afghanistan seemed a paradise for hippies in search of uncontaminated beauty, cheap drugs and exotic adventures. Women had more freedom, and people lived in peace. Yet, under this surface, the country was at a cross road: between East and West, Islam and Communism, modernity and tradition.

When the communists seized power, all these contradictions exploded and a chain of wars began. A group of young rebels – the Mujahideen (“Holy warriors”) – defied the Soviet army and won. The Western media turned them into a legend and praised the iconic commander Massoud as “the man who won the Cold War”.
Left alone to figure out the future of their homeland, Massoud and the other resistance commanders continued to fight, this time against each other. Afghanistan precipitated into the chaos of a brutal civil war and became a training ground for Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist network.

After 9/11, millions of Afghans hoped for the return of the golden era, but their descent into the abyss continued. Warlords remained in power and their nation trapped into a cycle of violence that seems endless.

Through the personal stories of our characters – warriors and civilians, men and women, all first-hand witnesses of the 40 years‘ war – and footage unearthed in Afghanistan, Russia and the Arab world, this documentary series tells the story of a conflict that has marked the world we live in.

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What started as a docu-drama about a Russian police plot to steal a billion dollars from a US financier and to murder his faithful tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, became an investigation of a massive hoax and an unprecedented international cover-up.

The Magnitsky Case in the version of the financier Bill Browder became the basis for laws and sanctions targeting Russian police and other officials, and for the claims that Putin personally had received a share of the millions looted from the Russian people. The film’s director and a Kremlin critic, Andrei Nekrasov discovers that a narrative defining Western Russia policies is riddled with falsehooods.

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Enter a hidden third world shadow industry of digital cleaning, where the Internet rids itself of what it doesn‘t like. Here we meet five “digital scavengers”, among thousands of people outsourced from Silicon Valley, whose job is to delete “inappropriate” content of the net.

Yet underneath their work lie profound questions around what makes an image art or propaganda and what defines journalism. Where exactly is the point of balance for social media to be neither an unlegislated space nor a forum rife with censorship? THE CLEANERS struggles to come to terms with this new and disconcerting paradigm. Evolving from a shared social vision of a global village to a web of fake news and radicalization, the film charts the rise and fall of social media’s utopian ideology.

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What does a woman need to be happy and fulfilled?

After 20 years of living in Berlin, the director Olga Delane goes back to her roots in a small Siberian village, where she is confronted with traditional views of relationships, life and love. The man is the master in the home; the woman’s task is to beget children and take care of the household (and everything else, too). Siberian Love provides unrivaled insights into the (love) life of a Siberian village and seeks the truth around the universal value of traditional relationships.

A freezing quest for love in rural Siberia.

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Sie sind in die religiös-korrekte Abaya gehüllt, dürfen kein Auto fahren, verfolgen beruflich aber ihre eigene Karriere. Die Frauen in Saudi-Arabien fordern das System von innen heraus.

Die Filmemacherinnen Gabriele Riedle und Carmen Butta sind mehrere Wochen durch das Königreich gereist und haben außergewöhnliche Frauen getroffen, die die Zukunft des Landes für Frauen verändern wollen - klug, diplomatisch und hartnäckig.

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Is Putin's Russia your Russia? In this four-part series we travel the country, meeting Russians from different parts of society, exploring the nature of Russia today and asking how they feel about their recent history under Putin. 

What do Russians want and why do they repeatedly vote for a man who seems to be pulling them back to a new version of their past?

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Holy Cow

Tapdig has a dream of bringing a European cow into his picturesque village in Azerbaijan to improve the condition of his poor family. He decides to call it Madona.

His passion unsettles the traditional community, the Old Men see a threat in having a foreign cow among them as they say its milk is full of chemicals. Even his wife Vafa does not want to take care of such a strange breed. But Tapdig is ready to risk it all and challenges the conservative mentality to open up and rethink the attitude.

How do human beings handle change while remaining true to their own traditions? Holy Cow questions the prejudices against the unknown and how ready are we to accept a newcomer.

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Nach achtmonatiger Wartezeit erhält ein ARTE-Team - als erstes ausländisches Team seit langem - eine Drehgenehmigung für eine zweiwöchige Rundreise quer durch Nordkorea. Trotz der umfassenden Bewachung gelingt es immer wieder, offiziell verbotene Motive mit der Kamera festzuhalten und überraschende Einblicke in den Alltag eines völlig abgeschotteten Landes zu bekommen.

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Zelim escaped from the Northern Caucasus. Now he is desperately trying to forget his past and get used to his present but the nightmares of what has happened are haunting him. Lost and curious he is running all over Oslo trying to learn this place that has become his new home.

He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. One day, like any other day in Ingushetia, Zelim was forced into a car and taken to a police station. Since that very moment his whole life changed. Five long days of torture followed.
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December 1991: The Soviet head of state, Mikhail Gorbachev, conducts long-distance calls with political leaders in the Western world. Shortly after, Gorbachev speaks on television, stating: “Hereby I quit my position as President of the USSR.”

It is quite a banal finale for the grandiose communist vision of the “new era” that had kept the world busy since the October Revolution in 1917. As late as in 1975, the utopia seemed closer than ever: The communist world was at the peak of its geographical expansion, controlling or influencing almost half of the planet’s population. But why did the Soviet Empire collapse only 16 years later? What forces were there behind the creeping erosion and sudden collapse? Why could no one foresee the unthinkable? For the first time ever, this story is told chronologically and from across and within the borders of all countries involved by the people who were there, who lived through it, who made it happen.

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