Vergeten dwazen

Directed by Frans van Erkel

In July 1992, fleeing the war in former Yugoslavia, some patients of the Bosnian mental institution in Jakes leave for Hungary. Since 1996, these patients are housed on a ward of a refugee centre in the Hungarian city of Debrecen, where the rooms are clean but bare. The filmmakers talk to patients, who would rather go back home. They interview the psychiatrist in attendance, who wonders why there is no place in Bosnia for this small group. In Bosnia, they interview the psychiatrist of their former institution; old video footage shows the ravages of war. Plaintive singing on the soundtrack accompanies a trip across snow-clad Bosnia, where the filmmakers visit the patients' relatives. Their reactions are similar each time: they did not know that the patients were in Hungary now, but Bosnia has a lack of money, doctors and medicine. According to their relatives - and the director of a new institution in Jakes - they are better off in Hungary.