The Brooklyn Connection
North American Premiere

The Brooklyn Connection

| Netherlands | 53 MINUTES | English
Will the next war in Kosovo be fought with guns supplied by a Bay Ridge roofer? That's the question at the heart of this eye-opening Dutch documentary based on Stacy Sullivan's book, Be Not Afraid, For You Have Sons in America. Armed conflict in Kosovo did not end with the UN-sponsored ceasefire in 1999. It merely went underground, as Serbs and Albanians jockeyed for advantage in the next hot war, scheduled to take place as soon as one or both of these perpetually squabbling parties gets sick of answering to international authority. A central figure in that war is likely to be Florin Krasniqi, an Albanian Muslim who owns a roofing company in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Connection follows Krasniqi, an ardent Kosovar nationalist whose brother was killed by Serbs, as he raises money and shops for guns and military supplies in the U.S. before shipping them off to guerrillas in the former Yugoslavia. Why do business in the U.S.? For the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks, of course, and because America's lax gun laws make it easy to purchase elephant guns in bulk with nothing more than a credit card and a clean record. Krasniqi also explains that America's large population of right-wing gun enthusiasts are more than willing to help out a man they perceive as a freedom fighter leading an "anti-Communist" insurgency. Pungent and pointed, The Brooklyn Connection foreshadows the role the U.S. may play in the next great international conflict-whether it knows it or not.

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