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This thesis examines how madness has been used in post-Yugoslav cinemas to facilitate thinking about experiences of the break-up of the SFRY throughout the 1990s and 2000s, its consequences and implications for the future. The study conceptualises post-Yugoslav film cultures as public spheres in which artistic and industrial practices are often combined to create meaning around the core themes of trauma and identity in post-Yugoslav cultures. Working with seven feature-length titles from a range of post-Yugoslav successor states (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo) I illustrate how images of madness have been essential in the cultural processing of events of the 1990s. Whilst featuring individuals suffering mental instabilities and disturbances, and sometimes asylums or mental health institutions, I contend such films are not ultimately concerned – on a thematic level – with mental health, but instead focus on the use of such characters in a metaphoric capacity for engaging core themes of Yugoslav break-up, conflicts, and difficulties of subsequent transition. Using the semantic/syntactic approach to genre, I identify two common ways in which madness is used on a textual level to engage these core themes. The first of these, the ‘inside-out asylum trope of madness’, is concerned with the use of the asylum in films which assess critically the dominant political ideologies of the successor states in question at a time when political pluralism was not yet established by the transition process. Films discussed include Burlesque Tragedy (Marković, 1995), Marshall Tito’s Spirit (Brešan, 1999), and Kukumi (Qosja, 2005). The second trope is the ‘multiple realities trope of madness’ in which the presentation of diegetic reality on screen is adapted to reflect various conceptualisations of trauma and loss arising from Yugoslav break-up and transition. Here the films include Loving Glances (Karanović, 2003), Fuse (Žalica, 2003), Mirage (Ristovski, 2004) and Land of Truth, Love and Freedom (Petrović, 2000). Across the films selected, it is madness which ultimately provides a diverse pool of metaphors and images for an assessment of Yugoslavia’s traumatic demise and the ensuing process of picking through the debris of its ideology, cultural practices, values and ways of living for precisely what might be salvageable and what should be discarded.

La transformation de supporters de football serbes, bosniaques et croates en soldats dès 1991, la présence de supporters en première ligne contre la police dans la chute du régime de Milošević et dans l’opposition au président croate Franjo Tuđman, la mobilisation violente de supporters contre la tenue de gay pride, la prise d’assaut de l’ambassade des Etats-Unis à Belgrade, sont autant de faits qui s’inscrivent au croisement du football par les acteurs en jeu, du politique par la portée de leurs actes, et de l’identitaire comme fondement légitimateur à agir. C’est donc à partir de ces faits politiques que la question des interactions entre les mondes du football et le monde politique tire sa légitimité. Il s’agit alors de décrypter ces interactions, aussi bien dans le temps depuis la fin de la Yougoslavie communiste jusqu’à nos jours, que de façon comparée entre les différents pays issus de la Yougoslavie. Ce faisant, loin de la futilité dont on l’affuble, il faut prendre le football au sérieux aussi bien dans son rôle de fenêtre d’observation que dans celui d’agent politique de changement. Ce faisant, c’est à travers le football mais surtout par le football que l’on peut produire une analyse politique transversale de l’espace post-yougoslave, que ce soit sur le phénomène de politisation par le bas, sur la persistance du paradigme ethno-nationaliste, sur le caractère très discutable de l’idée de rupture entre l’avant et l’après 2000, ainsi que sur la persistance de pratiques politiques autoritaires dans l’ensemble de la région indépendamment du processus d’intégration européenne. / Football fans from Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia started turning into soldiers from 1991. Football fans were on the frontline against police during Milosevic’s fall as well as in the opposition to Croatian president Tudjman. Football fans were able to mobilize in huge numbers with extreme violence against gay pride parades. Football fans assaulted and set the US embassy in Belgrade on fire in 2008. These facts are at the crossroads between football through the actors at stake, politics through their aims and meanings, and identity regarding the founding ideas upon which they rely. It is therefore throughout those facts that interactions between the football world and the political world are a legitimate question to raise. It shall be dealt with not only by taking into account a broad period from the end of communist Yugoslavia to nowadays, but also in a comparative approach between the different states born from Yugoslavia’s collapse. Thus, far from being a futile occupation and an illegitimate social science object, it is necessary to take football seriously regarding the two roles it plays, first as an observation window, second as a political agent of change. Therefore, not only through football but also by football will it be possible to draw a transversal political analysis, be it on the politicisation process from the bottom, on the persistence of an ethno-nationalist paradigm, on whether 2000 can be deemed a deep break in the period from 1991 to nowadays, and on authoritarian practices in the region regardless of the European integration process.