After last year’s online version, the Bolzano Film Festival Bozen returns as an in-person event from April 5th to 10th in Bolzano, Italy. To celebrate this return to normality the organisers are highlighting Albanian and Kosovar cinema in the “Focus Europe” category.
This selection gives a chance to discover films from these countries and meet the new generation of Balkan film-makers. The guest of honour of this 35th edition is actor/scriptwriter Hazir Haziri, who is also dean of the Arts Faculty at Pristina University (Kosovo). For him this upcoming generation “can be considered the golden generation. Despite the low budgets of Kosovar films, we manage to produce real works of art and show them at prestigious international festivals. Our films deal with sensitive subjects. The 1999 war in Kosovo has left wounds in society which have yet to heal.”
For this focus on Albania and Kosovo, eight films (four features and four shorts) made by the new generation are being shown. They deal with important issues such as emigration, the traumas of war and traditional social structures. Among the feature films, Blerta Basholli’s Hive (2022), a Kosovar film which won three awards at the Sundance festival. Open Door (2019) by Albanian film-maker Florec Papas illustrates the struggles of two sisters in a violent patriarchal society. Visar Morina’s Father (2015) shows the traumas of war through the long journey of a child whose father has abandoned him. And finally Erald Dika’s documentary Neverland (2019) in which a group of friends recall their adolescence in Albania during the economic crisis of 1997.
As well as these Balkan films, a programme of 8 fiction feature films and 8 documentaries will be screened. All compete for the Best Film Award, decided by two separate juries for fiction and documentary.
The whole programme is available here.
Sources : Bolzano Film Festival Bozen, Cineuropa
