THE PARTISAN NECROPOLIS

Followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Chris Leslie.

Length: 71 min

Film Category: Feature Documentary
North American Premiere

Film Synopsis:

In Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Partisan Memorial Cemetery—once a striking tribute to Yugoslav fighters who resisted Nazi-aligned forces—now stands shattered, defaced, and engulfed in political controversy. Built between 1959 and 1965 by renowned architect Bogdan Bogdanović, the site has become a powerful flashpoint in a society grappling with the resurgence of right-wing revisionism. The documentary traces the cemetery's transformation from a celebrated monument to a target of neo-fascist destruction, culminating in the 2022 attack that obliterated hundreds of engraved stone markers. While many local leaders and institutions dismiss the memorial as a relic of a bygone ideology, a small group of families refuses to let their loved ones' legacies be erased. Their fight to preserve the site—and what it represents—anchors a broader examination of how histories are rewritten and weaponized.

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Director's Biography

Chris Leslie is a photographer, filmmaker, and director based in Glasgow, Scotland. His practice is primarily concerned with documenting processes of urban transformation and the lived experiences of marginalised individuals, groups, and communities. Through an engagement with both local and international contexts, Leslie's work situates itself at the intersection of documentary, social history, and visual anthropology.

Over the course of his career, Leslie has produced extensive visual documentation across Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Africa, and Asia, in addition to his sustained engagement with the city of Glasgow. Leslie's critically acclaimed multimedia project and accompanying publication, Disappearing Glasgow, offers a detailed chronicle of the city's profound socio-spatial transformations. The project has been widely recognised for its contribution to the visual historiography of Glasgow's recent past, positioning Leslie as one of its most consistent and insightful chroniclers.

His long-term body of work, A Balkan Journey, constitutes a poignant exploration of post-conflict recovery and reconstruction in the former Yugoslavia. Spanning twenty-five years, the project foregrounds the enduring psychological and physical legacies of war while examining the role of memory, resilience, and collective identity in processes of reconciliation and rebuilding.

Leslie's photographic work is held in the permanent collection of the National Galleries of Scotland, as well as in various private collections.

As a filmmaker, Leslie's debut feature-length documentary, Finding Family (2014), was the recipient of two Scottish BAFTAs in the New Talent category and two Golden Apple Awards at the BHFF NYC Festival. The film premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival and has been noted for its intimate treatment of personal and collective histories in post-war Bosnia.

Leslie's current project, The Partisan Necropolis (2026), is conceived as both a feature-length and a television documentary. It investigates the contested heritage of the Partisan Memorial Cemetery in Mostar, tracing the site's political, cultural, and symbolic significance within contemporary debates on memory, preservation, and identity in post-conflict societies.