The latest ICTY documentary film, Through Their Eyes: Witnesses to Justice has been screened by 10 local and regional television stations throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) this summer, including the broadcasters from Sarajevo, Mostar, Bihać, Zenica and other towns in BiH. Most of these TV stations have screened the documentary on more than one occasion.
Through Their Eyes: Witnesses to Justice premiered at the ICTY 20th Anniversary conference in Sarajevo, and was then shown in Belgrade, Zagreb and Sarajevo to select audiences earlier this year. This is the first time the film has been broadcast on local television, as a result of the Outreach Programme’s partnership with the Bosnian Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), and in the framework of the BIRN’s TV Justice monthly programme.
The film profiles 5 ICTY witnesses, their experiences before and after the war and their motivations to come forward and testify. Director and Editor Steve Coulson, speaking of his experiences meeting these witnesses, remarked “what really surprised me about these witnesses, who had experienced great hardship during the conflict, was that their main motivation in deciding to testify wasn’t to seek vengeance. It was to see justice done.”
The High Definition documentary has also been frequently screened on United Nations TV (UNTV) which has a world-wide reach of up to 300 million viewers on cable TV in the United States, via satellite in Europe and globally on their internet channel, UN Web TV.
This week also marks the launch of the English and the BCS version of the film on social media channels and the film can be viewed on the ICTY’s YouTube channel.