31/01/2025 - Nanna Frank Møller and Zlatko Pranjić deliver a brilliant chronicle of a long-term grassroots struggle in Bosnia against a polluting multinational and complicit institutions

"There are cancers everywhere within a 100-metre radius. What else is there to say? And that’s without considering all the people who have died." It’s into the epicentre of an incredibly sad pollution affair, symbolic of certain industrial and political-economic excesses detrimental to public health, which the captivating movie The Sky Above Zenica [+see also:
trailer
film profile] thrusts us. Directed by Denmark’s Nanna Frank Møller and Bosnia’s Zlatko Pranjić, the film was screened in FIPADOC’s Impact competition after notably winning awards in CPH.DOX, Sarajevo, the Ji.hlava Festival and Trieste.

Shot between 2017 and 2024, the documentary takes the form of an Erin Brockovich-style investigation following in the wake of friendly and tenacious Samir Lemes, who studied in Los Angeles and who teaches mechanical engineering in Zenica, a town in Bosnia-Herzegovina located 50 kilometres from Sarajevo in the valley of the Bosna river. A member of the Eko Forum association and supported by a small group of devoted activists (including Edita), our protagonist lives in a Dantesque atmosphere of thick smoke (due to a total lack of filtering or purification) and stinking air, issuing from the ArcelorMittal group’s local coking plant which pumps out fumes 24/7. It’s an environment awash with its own share of toxic waste (notably benzene) which is slowly poisoning the population and turning Bosnia into the European country recording the highest number of deaths through air pollution. But they still need to prove the steel-making giant’s responsibility in this affair, whose legal obligation is it to measure the air quality around the factory, but who haven’t done a thing to this effect since 2010 when they obtained their environmental permit.

"Helped" by a high-profile incident (red sludge in the Bosna), the Eko Forum Davids attack their Goliath via the Ministry for the Environment, whose embarrassment over the employment-public health balance is evident. And abracadabra, a magical answer appears: a €46m project to building an electrical power plant which will use the factory’s gases as an energy source, involving the town of Zenica, Finnish experts and obviously ArcelorMittal, all funded by the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) within the framework of the Green City Action Plan. Experts come and go, public meetings unfold, and everyone congratulates themselves under Samir’s perplexed and critical eye. Because, ultimately, the source of the problem hasn’t been fixed. But our grassroots "hero" shows no shortage in resources or determination…

Thrilling and poignant, The Sky Above Zenica successfully combines the portrait of an ailing microcosm (a town, its residents, activists and a factory) with much wider issues (lethal pollution, weighty economic and political influences, and the double-speak employed by the powerful to shield themselves against civilians’ legitimate complaints). Following in the footsteps of its investigative main character who tries to stop nonchalant pollution, the film vigorously demonstrates how necessary engagement, perseverance and empowerment truly are in order to scale seemingly insurmountable summits. But it also reminds us that the path towards truth and justice has been strewn with adversity, deaths and illnesses. As a Zenica resident stresses: "We’re asking for totally normal things: for laws to be respected and for our children not to poisoned."

The Sky Above Zenica was produced by Denmark’s Magic Hour Films in co-production with Bosnia’s Realstage and HBO Max. Croatian firm Split Screen are steering world sales.

(Translated from French)