Vukovar, jedna priča

In December 1995, the Croatian delegation prevented the film from being screened at a United Nations conference, calling it Serbian "propaganda".[3][4] Writing for the Croatian daily Jutarnji list, Jurica Pavičić gave it a scathing review, saying the film was consistently promoting a false equidistance between the Croatian and Serbian nationalisms in the war, which he personally found particularly irritating after the Vukovar massacre and at the height of the siege of Sarajevo.[5] In 2009, the Zagreb Film Festival director wanted to include the film in its "Film and propaganda" session, but the film's producer retracted their permission for the showing.[5]

In reviewing the film for Variety, critic Allen Young compared the Serbian-Croatian couple to the story of Romeo and Juliet and wrote that the film's "depiction of a beautiful country’s loss of its moral compass is a terrifying, dazzling achievement".[6] In his review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden echoed the Shakespearean comparison while noting the film's "disturbing" portrayal of war and highlighting its anti-war premise.[4] Writing for New York, Maureen Callahan stated that, although the film "isn't as technically accomplished or as seamlessly scripted as, say, Schindler's List, it is just as important and even more remarkable for its virtually real-time immediacy".[3] Film historian Andrew Horton writes that the film's value is "equally powerful for not degenerating into a simplistic 'us against them' polemic film" but instead leaving the audience with "a troubling feeling of 'look what we have done to ourselves'".[7]