Geographically, and ideologically, Yugoslavia stood on the border between two confronted blocks during the Cold War, but belonged to neither. The idea of ‘the third road’ was extremely popular; people really saw their country as an alternative to imperialist West and bureaucratic East.

Yugoslav regime was rarely criticized for lack of democracy; it was more fiercely attacked by the nationalist right wing, which sheds much light on the catastrophe that happened after Tito’s death.

Yugoslav film makers rarely confronted the system; they were mostly its ardent propagators. The ‘third road’ idea was popular even among the creators of Yugoslav’s best films – members of the Zagreb School of Animated film. Still, satire was an important element of Zagreb films, but the satirical razor was directed towards actual global problems, racism, colonialism, pollution, hunger, poverty, fear of the A-bomb, war, etc. Criticism was present, but it did not include social criticism. Yugoslav system was not only spared of criticism, it was, indirectly but indisputably, celebrated. The idea of a small, spiteful country existing on the borderline between two gigantic and hostile worlds was interwoven in many films made in the Zagreb studio. A small freedom oasis, surrounded by pressures, terror and danger, was an all-present motif in animated anecdotes of the leading school’s masters. A small man abused by his surrounding, who, despite the troubles, kept fighting for his way of life, his independence and neutrality was a common denominator of the authors of the Zagreb school, regardless of their artistic profile and their filmic and visual expression.

Soon after Tito’s death in 1980, the idea of the ‘third road’ turned out to be completely ‘unrealistic reality’, just like La Grande Illusion. After Gorbachov, perestroika, the fall of the Berlin wall, and the end of the cold war, the idea of the ‘third road’ and a country in between lost its initial meaning. Yugoslavia lost its international position, and moreover, dissolved in a bloody war.