Libyan rebels fly to Bosnia to see revolution film

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — More than a hundred Libyan rebels, sporting new suits, chartered a plane on Thursday to travel to the Sarajevo premiere of a documentary about their revolution.

The film "Tomorrow, Tripoli" follows the insurgents from the Libyan town of Zintan from the start of the uprising to the fall of leader Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

French director Florent Marcie, who filmed the Zintan fighters for eight months, said the group immediately applied for Bosnian visas when he told them the film would premiere in Sarajevo. It was screened at the WARM festival, which is entirely dedicated to world conflicts.

"I did not finish my sentence and there were 10 people around me who said they want to come," Marcie said. The word spread fast and initially 4,000 Zintanis wanted to come but in the end about 120 did.

The excited rebels recorded the 4 1/2 hour version of the movie with their smartphones until their batteries died. A shorter version will be shown to the public later.

Marcie said he made the movie to "to show the soul of a revolution."

Mussa Dwaib, a rebel prominent in the film, said the men figured that if Marcie had the nerve to follow them through battle, the least they could do was get to Sarajevo.

"We struggled for freedom, we gained that freedom and now we are free people," he said.

Another rebel, Ibrahim al-Madani, saw his father dying for the first time in the cinema Thursday since Marcie was the only one in the emergency room when it happened.

"My cousins also were fighting together against the Gadhafi troops and now they are not here," he said. "It was really hard."

Zintan is a small, traditional town of some 50,000 residents in north-western Libya, around 136 kilometers (85 miles) southwest of Tripoli. Residents formed a powerful militia, known for its battles with government soldiers.

Marcie told the AP he started following these fighters with his camera after a surprising chat with one of them about the works of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.


Associated Press writer Sabina Niksic in Sarajevo contributed to this report.


