A realistic history of the children growing up on the streets of Kosovo and doing hard work in order to survive. The story revers the likes of Besarta, Drenusha, Kosovare and Fitim, who, having no choice, work under dangerous circumstances until the late hours.
Found footage, visual postcards written in the 1990s on VHS, fragments of a new life abroad passed on, sent by planes or buses to Kosovo, and pictures sent back from the country. Hugs on platforms, cars leaving, weddings and birthdays. Dancing and tears: lots of tears of joy and despair. Repeatable situations create chronicles of torn lives, uncertainty, and suspended existences.
Found footage compilation of Albania’s turbulent 20th century history is also a bitter and telling essay on the nation’s worship of personality cults and a warning of false prophets to come.
Beti, a woman in her late forties, together with her family, is deported by Serbian security forces from her home in the capital of Kosovo to the border village of Bllacë. With war breaking out in 1999, her story of survival is stitched together as the world she knew disintegrates. The seemingly endless cycle of cruelty Beti endures on her journey to a safe haven becomes a collective story of survival.
Up until the mid-90s if you were openly gay in Albania, you would be sent to prison. Many homosexuals still face bigotry and violence, even in their own homes. In the last five years, Albania has seen a dynamic LGBTQ movement. Gay activist have created secret guest houses in Tirana that offer shelter to young homosexuals who have been brutally abused. VICE Greece traveled to Albania and recorded rare glimpses into the lives of people who have been victimized and neglected because of their sexual orientation in one of Europe’s most homophobic countries.
Homosexuality is one of the biggest taboos in Kosovar society. So much that the main characters of this film are hidden in shadows to protect them from the frequent attacks that occur against gays in Kosovo. This film gives the platform for Kosovo’s homosexual community to speak about their experiences and the discrimination against them, while shedding light on the subject through interviews with Kosovo’s religious leaders, psychologists, analysts and other citizens. Will society learn to accept these people as part of Kosovo’s new liberal reality, or must homosexuals remain in the shadows, hiding their true sexual identities in fear?
The movie tells a story that how one man that mistreats water without being aware that water is missing for one kid in other place.
“What if women could move a house?” In “As If Biting Iron” (2019), Rizaj uses the medium of film to challenge this very question as we witness the walls of a brutalist building, situated in the forests of Kosovo, being moved by the forces of over 100 anonymous women. Pushing against the deadweight of the concrete, the burden of oppression literally and figuratively comes undone.
Kosovo 1988. Two young boys, a Serbian and an Albanian, raised together in a small town of Kosovo. As they grow up they find themselves in a war between two countries and on different fronts.
The Albanian transition has obliged Loro Shestani to give up: his wife is dead, his daughter is a refugee in Italy and has forgotten her roots, the sea does not offer fish any more. Loro has passed over the middle of his life and he has understood that his life is in vain, he is not prepared to accept this new world. He shares his solitude with his pigeons.
The different skin colours of the multicoloured creatures cause their peaceful coexistence to gradually collapse under the weight of discrimination and jealousy – despite the fact that their similarities far outweigh their differences.
“Prizren - the City of Resources and Beauty” is a documentary directed by Zvonimir Saksida and produced by Zastava Film in 1972, which presents the history, traditions and beauties of Prizren with the aim of promoting the touristic potential of the city. Discovered in the Lumbardhi Cinema archive, it was screened for the first time during the exhibition “At Once Vague and Unavoidable: Modernities 1945-1989” produced as part of the partnership between Lumbardhi Foundation and Oral History Initiative within the project “Prizren Urban Memoryscapes” supported by Franco-German Cultural Fund, the French Embassy, the German Embassy, Municipality of Prizren and Sharrcem. The restoration and digitization of “Prizren - the City of Resources and Beauty” was made possible by the partner of the project, the French National Audiovisual Institute - INA and the French Embassy.
Congress for the unification of youth.
Albanian LGBT community members appear for the first time with their non hidden faces and names and share their personal stories about how the LGBT movement has changed their lives.
