Kezako: Nicolas, from May 21, Montenegro is independent. What will it change for this country?

Nicolas Petrovitch Njegosh: This is the end of a long and painful process: The dislocation of Yugoslavia and of a society which did not know or did not want to adapt itself to the evolution of the world. Of course, that does not want to say that all the problems are solved, but the destruction step is now ended and reconstruction can begin. To reconstruct in its proper and figurative senses. To reconstruct States, societies, social, economical and cultural networks, and of course dialogue. “Balkanic” dialogue but also dialogue with Europe, the world... Not a nombrilist dialogue that conducts to an exacerbation of rivalries but a dialogue open on today’s problematic. Independence offers then future prospects and I hope that Montenegrins will be the first conscious of that and will choose that way. Montenegro can become a laboratory in which new values and new development strategies will be able to be elaborated.

Kezako: You who was born in Brittany [1], how do you live your two identities?

N.P.N.: It can seem incompatible to carry two identities so different. I was successively baptised catholic, then orthodox. But I can testify that human soul is much larger than one can think, and even extensible: the more you put in it, the more it becomes richer. This plurality Brittany/Montenegro, with the Morocco roots by my marriage, brought to me much and taught me that identity can be a means of opening and sharing. Breton, French, European, Serbian, Montenegrin, Balkanic, Slavic or Celtic (and the list is not closed) , this is through these different identities that I feel myself as a citizen of the world. (...)

KEZAKO, issue of Sunday August 20, 2006 (in French)

Press kit of the 29th Douarnenez Film Festival (in French)

*Jean-Arnault Dérens is Redactor-in-Chief of Le Courrier des Balkans, French association of which Prince Nicolas Petrovitch Njegosh is President.