15 MINUTES - THE DVOR MASSACRE

Directors:  Georg Larsen and Kasper Vedsmand

Only a few meters from a Danish UN Camp in Dvor, Croatia, nine disabled people, both Serbs and Croats, were executed in cold blood by a group of unidentified men on August the 8th 1995. The Danish soldiers in Camp Dannevirke were assigned by the United Nations to monitor the ceasefire between the Serbs and the Croats. They were only allowed to use weapons in self-defense. In the summer of 1995, the Croatian Army ceasefire broke and about 250,000 Serbs were forced to flee during "Operation Storm". Once there was no longer a ceasefire to monitor, the soldiers were ordered to stay inside their camp and not interfere in the war. It was therefore up to one Danish officer, to make the crucial decision: to give orders to shoot or follow the UN mandate and not intervene. The film follows the former company commander Kold on his journey back to Croatia, to the place where he 20 years earlier had to make the most difficult decision in his life. Here he confronts his past and his decision, meets the commanders from the warring parties, and the relatives of the victims. He is forced to face difficult questions: Could he have stopped the massacre? Did he have a choice? Or was he, the Danish soldiers and the civilians actually let down by the United Nations?