(ANSA) - BELGRADE, OCT 24 - The mayor of Sarajevo, Benjamina Karic, and the imam Ahmed Tabakovic are among the signatories of an open letter to Vicenza's mayor, Francesco Rucco, in which they request assurance that no public screening of filmmaker Boris Malagurski's new film, 'Republika Srpska: The Struggle for Freedom,' will take place in the northern Italian city on November 11, 2022.

The film was made by a director who had "years of public relativisation and denial of the crimes committed in the RS' name, including the Srebrenica Genocide of 1995," according to the letter, seen by ANSA. Furthermore, Malagurski's film "revises this painful history of 1992-1995 by misrepresenting genocidal crimes as a 'fight for freedom.' In doing so, the film whitewashes crimes against humanity that the ICTY has found to have been committed, including the genocide in Srebrenica in July 1995," to the letter reads. Similar protests led to the cancellation of screenings of the documentary in almost 20 cities in recent weeks, including Dusseldorf, Brussels, Antwerp, Belgium, and Klagenfurt. (ANSA).