Milosevic on Trial

Slobodan Milosevic, nicknamed the Butcher of the Balkans, died of a heart attack on 11 March 2006. His death concluded the first trial in history against a former head of state before a United Nations court. From the very beginning, director Michael Christoffersen had access to all the court proceedings. He reduced 2,000 hours of footage to a manageable 70 minutes, in which not Milosevic, but rather Chief Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice and Milosevic's lawyer are the protagonists. not only provides a journalistic overview of a historical event, it also describes the immensely complex issues involved in a trail of this magnitude and significance. Milosevic who considered the trial an illegal travesty, also conducted his own defence before the court. As a result, the evidence he presented sometimes worked against him, making a conviction all the more a reality. Prosecutor Nice thinks any verdict would have led to an appeal, which is why he considers Milosevic's death perhaps the best possible outcome. Milosevic's lawyer, who began to see the former president as a father figure, only mourns.