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This one-hour documentary reveals the inside story of how Milosevic, Europe’s last dictator, was defeated, not in smoke and flames, but in a courageous and risky campaign of political defiance and nonviolent action that began more than a year earlier. Using exclusive footage and conversations with the principal actors, Bringing Down a Dictator shows how Otpor, a youth movement, in partnership with pro-democracy and human rights groups, turned the people of Serbia against Milosevic. They forced him to call for early elections, campaigned relentlessly and creatively against him, insured against election fraud and finally, turned police and army loyalty from the regime to the people. In a country saturated with weapons it was not, in the end, armed revolution or NATO military power that undid the Serbian dictator, but an ingenious strategy of civilian resistance laced with surprising humor, risk, and rock and roll. For American audiences there is special interest: the Serbian people’s success was hastened by a flow of technical and financial assistance from the United States and the European Union, in what could become a model for American policy in support of popular democratic forces seeking to remove authoritarians elsewhere in the world.

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