With no input from the woman herself, this movie is about the beginning of Louise Arbour's tenure as Chief Prosecutor at The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
The movie starts out strong with a comment with very strong insight concerning hiring an interpreter: "You don't just need someone who understands the languages, you need someone who understands the people". Unfortunately, soon thereafter, the typical Western uninformed opinions are brought up: (Yugoslavia is a) "religion fuelled powder-keg" "Serbs, Croats and Muslims originally were one nation" "Slovenia and Croatia proclaimed independence causing a civil war" "War crimes on all sides" (but 90% were Serbian caused) You would think people were brought in to this tense situation with at least a basic understanding of the facts and not ignorance.
Louise Arbour also makes the mistake of thinking her secret indictments were successful with the "dozen Croats who turned themselves in". This actually happened as a result of politics behind the scenes. In 1999, the US State Department's James Foley said that Croatia faced "the greatest possible consequences" from continuing non-cooperation with the tribunal. Croatia was ascending in to the 'Partnership for Peace' and negotiating significant loans that would both be in jeopardy unless Croatia was more compliant. It was this international economic and political pressure that caused these soldiers to 'surrender' to the court, not the chief prosecutor.
To the movie's credit, it did seem Louise Arbour learned from her experience and changed her thinking to make the following comment: "We're going after Milosevic. These wars started with him and, one way or another, this tribunal ends with him".
Minor flaws in the movie I found were all the international soldiers speaking with Canadian accents, a scene where Louise Arbour hands her wine glass to her interpreter like he is her personal butler and my favourite, having an actress from outside the region pretend to be a grieving grandmother speaking Croatian but failing miserably.
The topic of Arbour's tenure at the Hague is a fascinating one but don't use this low budget movie as a source for insight in to this topic.
The movie starts out strong with a comment with very strong insight concerning hiring an interpreter: "You don't just need someone who understands the languages, you need someone who understands the people". Unfortunately, soon thereafter, the typical Western uninformed opinions are brought up: (Yugoslavia is a) "religion fuelled powder-keg" "Serbs, Croats and Muslims originally were one nation" "Slovenia and Croatia proclaimed independence causing a civil war" "War crimes on all sides" (but 90% were Serbian caused) You would think people were brought in to this tense situation with at least a basic understanding of the facts and not ignorance.
Louise Arbour also makes the mistake of thinking her secret indictments were successful with the "dozen Croats who turned themselves in". This actually happened as a result of politics behind the scenes. In 1999, the US State Department's James Foley said that Croatia faced "the greatest possible consequences" from continuing non-cooperation with the tribunal. Croatia was ascending in to the 'Partnership for Peace' and negotiating significant loans that would both be in jeopardy unless Croatia was more compliant. It was this international economic and political pressure that caused these soldiers to 'surrender' to the court, not the chief prosecutor.
To the movie's credit, it did seem Louise Arbour learned from her experience and changed her thinking to make the following comment: "We're going after Milosevic. These wars started with him and, one way or another, this tribunal ends with him".
Minor flaws in the movie I found were all the international soldiers speaking with Canadian accents, a scene where Louise Arbour hands her wine glass to her interpreter like he is her personal butler and my favourite, having an actress from outside the region pretend to be a grieving grandmother speaking Croatian but failing miserably.
The topic of Arbour's tenure at the Hague is a fascinating one but don't use this low budget movie as a source for insight in to this topic.