The Sky Above Zenica (Zlatko Pranjić, Nanna Frank Møller, 2024)
Available in Croatian here.
When an ironworks was established in Zenica in 1892, Bosnia and Herzegovina had been under Austro-Hungarian rule for 14 years. The city’s industrial development, fueled by this and other facilities, significantly increased its population. By the early 20th century, Zenica had grown into an urban center that, before World War II, was already part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and home to the country’s largest industrial enterprise. The ironworks employed more than 4,000 workers, and the city became a hub for intellectuals. Numerous cultural and educational societies were founded in Zenica, alongside newspapers and magazines.
Under socialist Yugoslavia, following World War II, Zenica’s ironworks expanded to be among the largest ones in Europe by the 1970s. It employed 17,000 people, peaking at 24,000 employees by the 1990s. In the early 1960s, the Faculty of Metallurgy and an accompanying Institute were founded, followed by the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. Even Zenica’s football club, founded in 1945, bears the name Čelik (Steel), reflecting the city’s industrial identity. This is also why Zenica became one of Bosnia’s largest cities, with approximately 145,000 inhabitants in 1991, though this number has since dropped to around 100,000.
By the 1960s, however, it was already clear that iron production in Zenica posed significant environmental challenges. Despite the socialist emphasis on heavy industry, American and British experts were brought in during the 1980s to explore solutions to the worsening pollution. The 1990s war interrupted these initiatives, and from 1992 to 1999, the ironworks ceased operations entirely. During the subsequent wave of privatization, the facility changed hands multiple times: first under Kuwaiti administration, then to Indian ownership by Mittal Steel in 2004. Two years later, Mittal merged with Arcelor, itself formed from the merger of three smaller European producers: Spain’s Acelaria, France’s Usinor, and Luxembourg’s Arbed. Since 2007, the Zenica steel mill has operated under ArcelorMittal, now the world’s second-largest steel producer. Its operations in Zenica are also connected to its plant in Prijedor, another city in the country. Since 2008, ArcelorMittal in Bosnia has specialized in integrated steel production, which involves processing iron ore through smelting, a process that generates extreme levels of pollution.
Recognizing the impact of the corporation’s presence, local residents formed Eko Forum in 2008. This NGO has since worked tirelessly to spotlight the environmental and health crises caused by ArcelorMittal’s operations. Several of its members are featured in Zlatko Pranjić and Nanna Frank Møller’s 2024 documentary, The Sky Above Zenica, filmed over seven years.
Pranjić, who grew up in Zenica but moved to London in the 1990s, became aware of Eko Forum’s activism through btheir publich efforts. In 2012, the organization succeeded in drawing international attention to Zenica’s environmental plight, with The Guardian covering the issue and BBC 4 planning a documentary (the project was ultimately shelved after legal thereats from ArcelorMittal). All of this underscores the significance of The Sky Above Zenica, a film that has elevated Eko Forum’s struggles to global visibility. Premiered at the 30th Sarajevo Film Festival, the film has since toured other festivals and is set to stream in Croatia on HBO this fall.
The directors portray the city through a series of stark, almost dystopian images of industrial landscapes, continuously interrupting the narrative. Møller’s cinematography intensifies the harshness of the settings, favoring cold, bluish tones and underexposed shots to evoke the sense of hostility. Early in the film, a conversation between women at a local market reveals the prevalence of serious illnesses around them– one mentions cancer as the reason for her diatery restrictions. Later, as they approach the sprawling ironworks–its thick, acrid smoke visible from afar–one remarks bitterly, “Some Indian guy came and opened an ironworks, man–why didn’t he open it in London?”
The ironworks looms over the Tetovo settlement in Zenica, where every street seems to have at least one oncology patient. Type 2 diabetes is also alarmingly common, even among younger residents. Despite widespread knowledge of the health risks, there is no official acknowledgement that the air in Zenica is hazardous. Eko Forum activists painstakingly document to the health issues of residents, though many are reluctant to speak out, fearing they might jeopardize jobs provided by ArcelorMittal. A recurring radio broadcast links air quality to respiratory problems–according to the World Health Organization (WHO), Bosnia and Herzegovina has the second-largest mortality rate globally from air pollution, surpassed only by North Korea.
Central to the film’s narrative is Samir Lemeš, a mechanical engineer and dean of Zenica’s Polytechnic Faculty. Lemeš warns of the grave dangers posed by ArcelorMittal’s coking plant, which operates without the exhaust gas filters mandated anywhere else in Europe. Situated outside the EU, Zenica functions as an industrial colony where substandard practices are tolerated as long as Europe benefits from nearby raw materials (this parallels similar controversies, such as Rio Tinto’s plans in Serbia’s Jadar Valley).
Yet the hypocrisy of European institutions extends beyond lax oversight. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) financed ArcelorMittal’s project to construct a heating plant with Finnish partners. While ostensibly aimed at reducing harmful by–products and providing heat for residents, the project’s utility is questionable. Only 20% of the ironworks’ exhaust gases would be given purpose, and households would still bear heating costs. Public discussions captured in the film in the manner of Frederick Wiseman reveal the EBRD’s dismissal of community concerns, promoting the debunked theory that wood stoves and car emissions are Zenica’s primary pollutants. Even the mayor, Fuad Kasumović, appears disingenuous when branding the city as “green” under the EBRD’s 2019 action plan.
Professor Lemeš emerges as a voice of resistence, challenging a system that fails to valorize his expertise and public interest. He highlights a systemic paradox–environmental permits are dictated by investors rather than enforced upon them. This dynamic exposes communities like Zenica to exploitation, making them dependent on foreign investments. The Sky Above Zenica captures this tension with urgency, as a convincing account of how it doesn’t suffice to simply “sweep one’s own backyard” to solve larger society’s problems, e.g. to abandon the use of lighting coal stoves or ride a bicycle instead of a car.
The film challenges Western audiences to reconsider their detachment from places like Zenica. These “distant” industrial wastelands foreign visitors don’t even consider as attractive tourist destinations are products of policies shaped precisely by Western institutions. The power of documentary cinema as a catalyst for change is nevertheless already evident–just one week after the film’s premiere, ArcelorMittal announced plans to close its coking plant, reducing the harmful emissions in Zenica by 80%.