Vanessa Redgrave Premieres Bosnia Protest Film

British actress and activist Vanessa Redgrave.

‘Bosnia Rising’, a documentary about the events that led to the demonstrations across Bosnia and Herzegovina in February this year, was premiered in Sarajevo on Friday.

The 30-minute film focuses on the fight to save the Dita detergent factory, in the northern Bosnian town of Tuzla, that went bust after a failed privatisation which saw it sold to a local tycoon.

Discontent about botched privatisations, corruption and poverty were among the triggers for the protests earlier this year which began in Tuzla and spread across the country.

Redgrave, known for her activism for labour rights as well as her acting career, said that the issues captured in the film don’t only affect Bosnia, but trouble the entire world.

“It is an example of workers who suffered through privatizations that have wrecked and destroyed the economy, the European one,” Redgrave said in comments reported by Reuters news agency.

“Social justice is something people everywhere are crying for and rallying,” she said.

She also said that she intended to raise money to hire lawyers to help the Dita workers.

In February this year, more than 10,000 people who worked at the Dita detergent factory, and several other factories in Tuzla, which was once known as the centre of the metals and chemicals industries in Yugoslavia, gathered in front of the local government building to protest.

The companies where they worked, former business giants, were weakened or ruined in the privatisation process in the early 2000s like many other Bosnian state firms.

Workers demanded the reassessment of the privatisation process or the initiation of bankruptcy procedures so that they either receive years of unpaid salaries or be allowed to go back to work.

The protests in Tuzla sparked the biggest demonstrations across the country in years, with demonstrators in several towns setting government buildings on fire.