IKEA for YU

A documentary filmmaker’s search for a post-Yugoslav identity at home and abroad.

With Marija Ratković Vidaković (IKEA for YU).

Listen: “IKEA for YU” (Episode #116)

Bonus Extras: “IKEA for YU” (Episode #116)

Ad-free version of “IKEA for YU” (Episode #116).

Transcript: “IKEA for YU” (Episode #116)

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PETER KORCHNAK: This episode of Remembering Yugoslavia is brought to you by Yugoblok, a member-supported global community and resource hub for all who remember Yugoslavia. Through membership contributions, Yugoblok members make this podcast (and a whole lot more) accessible and freely available to all. 

Visit Yugoblok.com to explore and join today. 

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PETER KORCHNAK: This is Remembering Yugoslavia, a Yugoblok show exploring the memory of a country that no longer exists. I’m your therapist, Peter Korchnak.

The red thread that connects the stories on this show is the question of identity. Who are we who come from countries that no longer exist? Who are we, where are we in a world that seems not to have a place for us? How do we put ourselves together after the world we knew fell apart?

We answer these questions in various ways, the best way we can. Marija Ratković Vidaković chose film. She is a freelance filmmaker, film and theater teacher, and festival and workshop manager in Ludvika, a small town about 2.5 hours northwest from Stockholm. She is originally from Karlovac, Croatia, where she had been a film producer and director until 2017, when she and her family moved to Sweden. 

The following year Ratković Vidaković [with co-director Dinka Radonić] released the feature documentary film IKEA for YU, in which she probes her family’s and country’s history to construct and re-construct her own self. “Searching for me through the pages of history,” as she writes in the film description.

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: I think [the] identity part is something that I always come back to during different parts of my life, different phases of my life. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Today on Inspired by Yugoslavia: IKEA for YU.

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Let’s start with your background. And this is where your movie starts. Early on, you talk about your grandfather and coming from a place that doesn’t exist anymore, from a country that doesn’t exist anymore, that he very much loved, he was very much identified with. So tell us about your family, your family background, in Yugoslavia.

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: So I was born in 1985, so this was [the] last five to six years of Yugoslavia. Croatia was still part of Yugoslavia, I was born in Croatia. And my family was really living Yugoslav ideals. So they really believed in Yugoslavia. They believed what was it trying to be, they really believed in that story of brotherhood and unity. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Ratković Vidaković’s mother was a social worker and then an HR manager, father a mechanical engineer.

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: We lived in Croatia, but we have actually Serbian origins. So we were Serbs who were living in Croatia and who decided to stay in Croatia during the war. A lot of Serbs actually moved to Serbia during the war. But my parents, they think, we have built our life here, that’s our country, nevertheless, it’s now change[d] its name or its structure, but that’s our home. And I think during the war and the whole that period, I think they stucking [sic] to Yugoslavian ideals, they were surviving in that way, because it was very tough living in Croatia and being a Serb in wartime. 

When I say survive, I’m talking in metaphor. I think, mentally survive, not physically survive. I mean, they weren’t going out and saying, we believe in Yugoslav identity. entity. It was talked about that at our home, it’s something that, I think it helped them through all that nightmare. And besides that, I think, like I told you, they decided to stay in the place they called home, beside the closest family, my grandmother, their friends who helped them. I think 85, 90 percent of their friends were Croats. So, I mean, so I think that’s, that’s the thing that helped them go through all of that.

PETER KORCHNAK: In the film’s prologue, Ratković Vidaković describes Croatia’s society as “deeply divided” and “burdened,” by the legacies of wars and of Yugoslavia. “The new generation still fights the battles of their parents and grandparents,” she writes.  

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Ratković Vidaković then first introduces her late grandfather, Milan Rakas, who died when she was 14, as the greatest influence on her in her formative years. “When I think of my childhood today,” she says, “I think of him.”

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: My grandfather first he was journalist, but afterwards he was politician. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Milan Rakas headed Radio Karlovac and the Karlovac Weekly. He was also the director of Komunist, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia’s publication, and the secretary of the party’s Karlovac chapter.

Nepravdu prema Milanu Rakasu ispraviti!

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“He believed in Yugoslavia with all his heart and thought it was the best solution for the peoples of the region,” Ratković Vidaković says in the film. “Grandma used to say Yugoslavia was his mistress. Through him we all lived with Yugoslavia.”

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: He left for Serbia. So he was living there, and my parents and my grandmother stayed in Croatia. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Rakas left just before Karlovac became a warzone and got stuck in Serbia. He couldn’t return because it was unsafe for him to do so, on account of his pro-Yugoslav political work and as a Serb. He returned to his family back in Croatia after the war.

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: He passed away in 2000. And actually he passed away out of sorrow and out of—  he saw the country he, Yugoslavia, he really believed in, fall apart, and he fell apart as well. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Years later, Ratković Vidaković got married and had her first son.

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: When you become [a] parent yourself, you start thinking about more about your identity or roots, about everything. And that’s how I started making IKEA for YU, actually. 

PETER KORCHNAK: This was in 2012 or ‘13.

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: And when I started making it, I didn’t have a clue I will [sic] end up in Sweden. And we moved to Sweden in 2017. And I always said during all the screenings of the film that I never know, did the film make me move to Sweden or moving to Sweden saved my film. I think it’s both ways, actually.

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PETER KORCHNAK: The original name of the film was In Search of a Lost Country. 

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: The main idea was that we are traveling from monument to monument and telling the story about my grandfather and family history and so on, because I connected metaphorically [the] monuments and my grandfather. 

The first phase was me, my DOP—

PETER KORCHNAK: —Director of Photography Dinka Radonić—

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: —who also, at the end of the film, became co- director, and my producer and sound recorder, we traveled through all those monuments, and we filmed them separately, because we wanted to have them artistically filmed separately from the family. 

And the idea was that for my 30th birthday, which also happens to be [the] anniversary of Yugoslavia, it was the 29th of November, it was the biggest celebration in Yugoslavia, the idea was that we will pick, I don’t know, seven, eight monuments from all the ex-Yugoslavian countries, and I will travel with my family to all of them. 

But when we started filming those monuments separately from my family, I started also to dip, dig a little bit more in myself. That’s why I’m saying sometimes I’m not sure, did I help the film or film helped me in my process? 

And then for my 30th birthday, we really did that trip. For 29th of November, we went to the place where Yugoslavia was formed. And this was, this is in [the] middle of Bosnia in Jajce. So we were there for my 30th birthday, what was also celebration of Yugoslavia. 

PETER KORCHNAK: In one of the scenes, the road-tripping family makes a stop at Motel Plitvice, a freeway rest stop outside of Zagreb, which was demolished last year.

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: Yeah, that was the place where my parents got married. That’s why we went there. It was [the] beginning of the journey for my 30th birthday.

PETER KORCHNAK: In the first half of the film, the family tours a number of socialist-era Yugoslav monuments, Sutjeska, Bubanj, Kozara, Jasenovac…

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: And then I started also making those video diaries, filming all the thoughts and everything about identity, family, the transformation in myself, not just around myself. And that’s how, actually, we ended up in Sweden.

PETER KORCHNAK: The chronological narrative in the film is interspersed with these solo vignettes, where Ratković Vidaković talks about her personal journey, the quest to figure out who she is, wherever she is.

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: And why I’m saying that identity and questions about identity are always part of me, because even now, now I’m a Swedish citizen, and I speak Swedish almost fluently, and that’s not the problem. But who am I actually? Am I Swede? Am I Croatian? Am I Serb? 

PETER KORCHNAK: Sweden being part of the European Union complicates things for someone born in a federation comprising ethnonationally diverse republics that has often been compared to the EU. Croatia became a member of the European Union in 2013, four years before Ratković Vidaković emigrated.

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: I didn’t get any sense of [the] European Union until I moved to Sweden. There I figure[d] out, okay, why it’s actually good being a member of European Union, because then every door for you is open, actually, in each country of [the] European Union. Everything is much easier. Basically you just have to find a job and you’re sorted. 

When you are reading experiences of women from Serbia, from Bosnia, from Montenegro, and their families, what do they have to go through at the beginning here in Sweden, it’s a huge, huge difference, actually. So yes, in a way, I think being a part of European Union is going towards this global citizenship. 

But I don’t know, to be honest, like I told you right now, I don’t have an answer. Who am I, actually? I mean, I think I have tiny parts of everything in my identity, a little bit of Serbian, a little bit of Croatian, and a little bit of Swedish…

If my family was forcing Yugoslav identity because it was their escape, I think also now I’m not forcing European identity, but it’s actually the easiest way to describe the person who has so many identities, I would say.

PETER KORCHNAK: That also speaks to how identity is malleable, how it doesn’t necessarily have to be imposed from the outside, I mean, parts of it are maybe pushed on you or influencing you, but you can make your own choices, as an adult. You can choose not just the place, if you’re privileged enough to do so, not just the place where you are, but also who you are.

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: And also what plays a big, big role in identity is language, definitely. And knowing the language of the country you are connected to (I’m not saying living to, I’m now on purpose saying connected to). 

When you move from Balkan, when people ask you, what language do you speak? Then you— when you’re speaking with Serbian, Bosnians, Montenegrins, we speak same language, then you say, we speak our language, you don’t name the language you speak. Because also, when you try to explain to [a] Swede what is the difference between the language? The saddest thing when explaining is actually that there is more difference between northern and southern Swedish than between Serbian and Croatian.

PETER KORCHNAK: It was a very interesting point in your— one of many very interesting points in your documentary, and that was, when you were deciding to leave, or when you were talking about how you’re going to leave Croatia for Sweden. One of the things you said, and you kind of dwell on that for a little bit, was that you were having difficulty living in the in the family, or in the place where there’s that mentality of a country that fell apart, that doesn’t exist anymore, that you don’t want to live in it, that it’s almost like a burden to you. So can you elaborate that point, that thinking?

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: Yeah, I was thinking about the whole mentality.

It was a bit of a burden, because at the end of 2015, Croatia got [a] really, really right winged [sic] government, which actually fell apart in 2016. 

PETER KORCHNAK: In the 2015 election, voters returned HDZ, the Croatian Democratic Union, to power. While that particular government did get replaced in 2016, HDZ has been the ruling party since.

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: But nevertheless, it wasn’t feeling right in a way. And with all the experience I had as a kid living in Karlovac during the war, and when we got our son, and when our son started to be not [a] baby anymore, we together decided that we want to raise him somewhere else, somewhere where it is not important, are you Serb? are you Croat? are you right? are you left? It doesn’t matter. 

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PETER KORCHNAK: In the film Ratković Vidaković says she used to be Yugonostalgic but then came to question this emotion: “how can you miss something if you don’t even know what it was like?” 

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So she set out to find out what her parents and grandparents grieved for. 

But, according to the film’s description, “she had always felt that her family’s ideals were her own, until her life path turned her in a different direction. When she founded her own family with her husband, she began to question her parents’ and grandparents’ values, as well as her own, and if that was the environment in which she wanted to raise her son.” End quote.

PETER KORCHNAK: And what does it say about a place where the family will stay while there’s a war going on, and they’re the target, so to speak, and leaves when the country is in the European Union and part of the rich, rich world club. So that’s, you know, you end your movie with, with, with the with the little you know, the story about immigration out of Croatia. But that’s, that’s fascinating,

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: So my parents, I think it was the ‘92 or ‘93, they had all the papers ready for New Zealand, and they could move to New Zealand back then during the war. And they said no, because my grandparents and everybody who stayed back there. And as a parent now, I don’t agree with them. I don’t want my kid to go through all that. I don’t want him that kind of childhood.

Because maybe, yeah, Croatia is a part of European Union, and everything is bright and shiny, but it’s Balkan. Fire can start there from one day to another. If you ask people who are now, I don’t know, 50, 60, years old, about war in Croatia and everything, from both sides, Croatian and Serbians, how the war started and blah, blah. I don’t think that any of them believed that, for example, in June ‘91 that the war will [sic] start in September ‘91. It really happened for most of the people, I’m not saying for all, but for most of the people, it happened from one day to another.

PETER KORCHNAK: The film’s epilogue, in stark white lettering on black background, puts the filmmaker’s personal journey in context. 

“According to the data published by the Croatian Bureau of Statistics in 2017, at least 200,000 Croats, the majority of which are young adults with families…have left the country since 2013 when Croatia joined the EU. (…) As the main motive for emigrating, aside from employment, they listed general dissatisfaction with life in Croatia due to the political climate. Furthermore, they wanted to live in a well ordered country where their education and work would be more appreciated.” End quote. 

The HBO show, “The Leftovers,” takes place after 2 percent of the world’s population mysteriously disappears, with the story exploring the emotional and psychological impact of this quote unquote “Sudden Departure,” the grief, the loss, the death. (The Covid pandemic killed 0.2 percent of the world’s population.)

The 2021 census showed that since the previous census ten years prior, Croatia had lost nearly 10 percent of its population; in eastern parts of Croatia the decline was as high as 20 percent. 

That same year, some 25,000 people emigrated from the country, about half the population of Karlovac. 

The people who leave are disproportionately young and educated. About half of young Croats are considering leaving.

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IKEA for YU premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival, and traveled to some 25 additional festivals on three continents.

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: What was the most interesting to me that each country or each audience found something for themselves. 

For example, in Bangladesh, I didn’t get any question concerning Yugoslavia or something like that. They were old. They were connected to the part of the movie when I talk about motherhood.

In Karlovac came a lot of people who know my family, who know me. So it was a really special screening, I would say.

I think the movie, although it goes from Yugoslavia and searching for its own identity, it has quite a lot of different perspectives and that, and that’s what I was most happy with, actually, that I think different audience[s] can connect to it in a different way. 

PETER KORCHNAK: Ratković Vidaković is working on a couple of new documentaries, stay tuned. One of them is still secret, and the more advanced one also probes the issue of identity with a story connected to the former Yugoslavia. 

MARIJA RATKOVIĆ VIDAKOVIĆ: I’m not connected to Croatia as Croatia, I have to say. I’m connected to people I left there, and still, although I’m eight years already living in Sweden, sometimes I feel like I’m living in two countries, because with those people that I was close with eight years back, I’m still very close. I would say, even closer, we we have even better relationship, I would say. And it’s sometimes it’s tough, I have to make time both for my Croatian friends and Swedish friends, if you know what I mean. So actually, I’m not longing for Croatia. I’m longing for [the] people that I left there. 

PETER KORCHNAK: [OUTRO MUSIC – “Jugoslavijo / Od Vardara pa do Triglava” by Horn Orchestra]

PETER KORCHNAK: That’s all for this episode of Remembering Yugoslavia, thank you for listening and traveling with us. 

All guests’ opinions expressed are solely their own; unless otherwise noted they do not express, reflect, or represent the views or opinions of any third party, including myself. 

Find additional information, sources, embeds, links, photos, and the transcript of this episode at Yugoblok.com/RememberingYugoslavia. 

And while you’re there, join Yugoblok as a member and take part in a growing community of yugodiasporans and others.  

Outro music courtesy of Robert Petrić https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOx5DkDkceU. 

Interludes courtesy of Sticky Keys. 

I am Peter Korchňak. 

Hej då!