Post-Yugoslav Cinema In Light of The Aesthetic Theories of Badiou and Rancière

I define post-Yugoslav cinema as a corpus of narrative and documentary features that since 1991 have dealt with issues of the disintegration of Yugoslavia and/or its unequivocal social consequences, or, on the other hand, that have, through the use of post-memory, valorized Yugoslavia, especially the history of its political regimes and of the interactions of the country's nations. From the point of view of modern cultural studies, it is essential to differentiate instrumental post-Yugoslav cinema, which has served as a transmitter of political messages of powerholders, from autonomous post-Yugoslav cinema, which makes use of artistic means to convey to its audience social criticism, often backed by a support of general or cosmopolitan humanism and interculturality. Here, I shed light chiefly on autonomous post-Yugoslav cinema and how we can apply aesthetic theories of modern French philosophers Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière to it. With Badiou, I inquire into what artistic truths does autonomous post-Yugoslav cinema produce, whereas concerning Rancière, I wonder whether autonomous post-Yugoslav cinema corresponds with his aesthetic regime of art, free of the norms of representation. The central question is what, for autonomous post-Yugoslav cinema, the truth of the disintegration of Yugoslavia and of the Yugoslav Wars is.