Following the screening of the documentary Depth Two at Columbia University on January 23, 2017, a discussion highlighted the evocative potential of this film in presenting traumatic events which are still denied or marginalized by Serbian public discourse. The film tells the story of the discovery of a freezer truck containing the bodies of 55 Albanian civilians from Kosovo (all victims of March 20, 1999 massacre of Suhareka), and their burial in a mass grave at the location of Bajtanica. Bajtanica, still a training base of the Serbian Anti-Terrorism Special Forces, became the burial ground for 700 bodies during the Kosovo war.
Depth Two is part of a virtual memorial to the victims buried in Bajtanica, together with an oral history project which records the memories of survivors.
The director Ognjen Glavonic and producer Sandra Orlovic (former executive director of the Humanitarian Law Center), made the courageous and effective decision of showing only the different locations where these events developed, with testimonies of the protagonists added as voice over in a gripping narrative unraveling like a thriller. The testimonies, which the film identifies only in the final credits, are recordings taken at the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The film is an homage to the victims and a harrowing representation of the perpetrators. These are greedy men, men haunted by fears of the police, of NATO, of satellite surveillance, and of their neighbors, but also compromised bystanders or unwilling participants, who now must live with the horror of their actions.
Depth Two is part of a virtual memorial to the victims buried in Bajtanica, together with an oral history project which records the memories of survivors.