In May 2089, during the film festival on the French Riviera, the award for Best Documentary Film was won by a young director, Fatma Kadia. She studied film directing at the prestigious La Fémis school in Paris, and this is her first major award. The news received special attention in the countries that, up until 2040, were known as the Western Balkans, as the subject of her documentary focuses on a phenomenon that took place there.
The film explores the social and economic consequences of the emigration of the indigenous population over the past 100 years, during which there was no significant immigration of other peoples to the region. As a result, the Western Balkans today are very sparsely populated, even though the global population continues to grow slightly. The only oasis in this demographic desert is Belgrade, a cosmopolitan city of three million people, where the director, Fatma Kadia, gathered her interviewees while filming scenes for the documentary.
The interviewees in the documentary were members of the second and third generations of emigrants from the Western Balkans, speaking in German, Italian, and English. The director initially wanted them to speak Serbian or Albanian, but that proved impossible, as they no longer spoke the languages of their ancestors – so the entire film was subtitled. They expressed a special fondness for this part of Europe, which never became part of the EU, though most had visited only once or twice. For many, their last relatives had already passed away, and travelling to the region posed a significant logistical challenge, as Belgrade was the only city with direct flights to the countries whose citizenship they held.
When asked what they knew about the history of the region over the past hundred years, they replied that they were not well informed, though they had heard about the wars of the 1990s. It seemed absurd to them that anyone would fight over a piece of land only to leave it behind later. They were also aware of the unfulfilled expectations regarding accession to the European Union—hopes cherished by their grandparents until 2040, when the negotiations were officially terminated. They understood that this outcome was not surprising, as for decades before the official suspension, the accession talks had been little more than words on paper.
The director initially wanted them to speak Serbian or Albanian, but that proved impossible, as they no longer spoke the languages of their ancestors – so the entire film was subtitled.
In the film, the author also presented an economic study from as far back as 2024, which had warned about what might eventually happen in the region. At the beginning of the study, it was noted that around 17 million people lived in the Western Balkans at the time, while about 5 million people from the region resided abroad. The study pointed out that the number of those living abroad was steadily increasing, and that these two figures would gradually converge due to ongoing emigration and depopulation within the region itself.
The study warned of an emerging division within the Western Balkans that would not be shaped by internationally recognised borders—none of which, incidentally, had ever fully satisfied any of the region’s peoples. This division, already clearly visible in the 2020s, would instead follow the logic of the labour market, splitting the Western Balkans into two areas: one where Albanian is spoken and migration flows toward Italy, and another where Serbian is spoken and migration leads toward the German-speaking countries. Moreover, the study noted that within the Serbian-speaking area, migration toward Belgrade would intensify even further.
It argued that the governments and political elites of the Western Balkans failed to grasp the accelerating pace of emigration, driven by low living standards and the proximity of Italy and Germany – countries that not only attracted but also actively needed labour from the region.
The study warned of an emerging division within the Western Balkans that would not be shaped by internationally recognised borders – none of which, incidentally, had ever fully satisfied any of the region’s nations.
The film also mentions several initiatives that aimed to connect and strengthen the economies and peoples of the Western Balkan states in order to build a higher standard of living. However, all of them ultimately failed. The initiatives proposed by the European Union were formally implemented but never genuinely embraced, while those that emerged from agreements among the Western Balkan countries themselves were undermined by certain EU member states, as they conflicted with their geopolitical interests. The Open Balkan initiative is particularly highlighted, though information about it is limited, as it was short-lived.
In the second part of the documentary, the director—whose grandparents emigrated from Tunisia to France in the 2030s—is joined by two diplomats from the United States and Germany. Although elderly, they vividly recall the beginning of their careers when they were engaged with the Western Balkans. They remember that political elites in their countries had reached a certain level of saturation in dealing with the region’s instabilities. At the same time, the “Eastern Question” had emerged, and nearly all diplomatic resources were redirected toward it.
According to them, in 2022, a consensus emerged among Western strategists to shift from a strategy of solving problems in the Western Balkans to, as one of the diplomats put it, a strategy of anaesthetising the region through labour migration. At the time, discussions focused on the idea that if there were no people capable of starting a new conflict, there would be no conflict. This approach was accompanied by a flow of free labour from the Western Balkans, which was skilled and easily integrated into Western economies and societies.
The award-winning documentary concludes that neither politicians nor the peoples of the Western Balkans recognised that struggles over national issues cannot succeed without improving living standards and paying attention to the labour market, which, in the long run, is never wrong. Their short-sightedness came at the cost of demographic impotence, leaving national issues largely in the past, while barely five million people now live in the part of Europe to which no one wishes to emigrate.
Author: Nenad Jevtović, BSc in Economics, Institute for Development and Innovation (article published in Forbes Serbia, June 21, 2024)
