ugoslavia, an ethnically diverse federation of six republics, collapsed in a series of brutal fratricidal wars in the 1990’s. The countries that rose from its ashes to this day remain clinched in post conflict mode, lost in the murky waters of endless transition. War, trauma, and fear still define day-to-day life, persisting as the central forces that shape personal identity and the collective experience. The region continues to float somewhere between bloodshed and peace, unable to come to terms with its tragic history. In this setting, more than twenty years after the bloody demise of their beloved homeland, a group of idealists still declare as Yugoslavs, renouncing their nominal ethnic categorization in favor of a more inclusive form of collective identity. Their struggle is to preserve the memory of Yugoslavia and to revive the brotherhood and unity amongst its peoples, the tolerant beliefs the former country was built on. Contrasting the quiet dignity of Yugoslavs against the transitional realities they live in sets a critical view of the societies that inherited Yugoslavia. Impaired by a legacy of violence, nationalist policies, failed economies, the new states remain poorer, more corrupt, more dysfunctional than the failed Communist system they sprung out of. The current universal atmosphere of conflict, instability and crisis is what makes this subject transcend its regional importance. In a world increasingly influenced by populism, xenophobia and post-truth narratives, the disintegration of Yugoslavia and its consequences no longer seem the dark shadows of the past, but a prediction of the future, the forefront of the new global reality of the 21st century.