Thursday, August 25, 2005
Kosovo Film does very well at Sarajevo Film Festival
Rare Kosovo film highlights province's problems
Thu Aug 25, 2005 3:49 PM BST10
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By Nedim Dervisbegovic
SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Kosovo's first film since the 1999 war tells the story of three mental patients let loose from an asylum after the collapse of Serb rule.
Kosovo Albanian director Isa Qosya, who has not made a film for 17 years, said "Kukumi" was his way of showing how years of ethnic conflict had dehumanised people in the region.
The film, shot entirely in Kosovo, received its world premiere late on Wednesday at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
"I felt uneasy during the first years of this whirlwind and felt a certain dehumanisation of people who did not understand and help each other," Qosya told a news conference.
"The whole movie is a metaphor. Freedom is when you help someone and when you understand the other person too," he added.
The three main characters are two men and a woman -- Kukumi, Hasan and Mara.
Despite coming from a mental institution, they often appear to cope better than others with life in postwar Kosovo, with its ethnic tensions, U.N. bureaucrats and the foreign troops who occupied the province.
But a misunderstanding with NATO forces raises the question of whether the characters were better off inside the asylum.
"The role of NATO troops in Kosovo has had positive but also some negative consequences," Qosya said. "I can't understand their role now; it has become totally undefined."
FUTURE UNCERTAIN
Qosya said the province's problems stemmed partly from uncertainty over the future.
Kosovo is still legally part of Serbia. The Serbian government and Kosovo's now-tiny Serbian minority hotly oppose the independence Kosovo Albanians want.
Talks over the final status of the province are expected to start this year or next, depending on progress on issues including human rights and democracy in one of Europe's poorest corners.
"Everything is undefined, and that is accompanied by a lack of character and principle among the people," Qosya said.
Through a simple plot and sparing dialogue, the director portrays the tensions between those people who left Kosovo during Serb rule and the war and those who stayed on throughout.
The main characters seem most at ease when left undisturbed in uninhabited settings, such as when they drive a railway car along deserted tracks, gaze at a lake in an abandoned quarry or convert a rundown stable into their home.
Qosya said he had difficulty raising funds for the movie in a region struggling to provide the population with basic services like health care. But eventually Kosovo's authorities agreed to foot the 600,000 euro bill.
Croatia's Jadran Film provided the equipment, and the all-Albanian cast and Qosya worked without pay. "Kukumi" is in the competition programme for the best regional movie award at the Sarajevo festival.
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The concept of mental patients doing better in a chaotic situation than the sane has been done before, it's a little improbable but it makes a point.
The reality was that the mentally ill suffered very greatly in all the wars in the region. Mentally ill people were under institutional care unlike in the U.S. where most mentally ill people are on special drugs and are relatively free.I don't know that they coped any better. Still sounds like a good movie and I hope people outside the Balkans will have the chance to see it.
Thu Aug 25, 2005 3:49 PM BST10
Printer Friendly | Email Article | RSS
By Nedim Dervisbegovic
SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Kosovo's first film since the 1999 war tells the story of three mental patients let loose from an asylum after the collapse of Serb rule.
Kosovo Albanian director Isa Qosya, who has not made a film for 17 years, said "Kukumi" was his way of showing how years of ethnic conflict had dehumanised people in the region.
The film, shot entirely in Kosovo, received its world premiere late on Wednesday at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
"I felt uneasy during the first years of this whirlwind and felt a certain dehumanisation of people who did not understand and help each other," Qosya told a news conference.
"The whole movie is a metaphor. Freedom is when you help someone and when you understand the other person too," he added.
The three main characters are two men and a woman -- Kukumi, Hasan and Mara.
Despite coming from a mental institution, they often appear to cope better than others with life in postwar Kosovo, with its ethnic tensions, U.N. bureaucrats and the foreign troops who occupied the province.
But a misunderstanding with NATO forces raises the question of whether the characters were better off inside the asylum.
"The role of NATO troops in Kosovo has had positive but also some negative consequences," Qosya said. "I can't understand their role now; it has become totally undefined."
FUTURE UNCERTAIN
Qosya said the province's problems stemmed partly from uncertainty over the future.
Kosovo is still legally part of Serbia. The Serbian government and Kosovo's now-tiny Serbian minority hotly oppose the independence Kosovo Albanians want.
Talks over the final status of the province are expected to start this year or next, depending on progress on issues including human rights and democracy in one of Europe's poorest corners.
"Everything is undefined, and that is accompanied by a lack of character and principle among the people," Qosya said.
Through a simple plot and sparing dialogue, the director portrays the tensions between those people who left Kosovo during Serb rule and the war and those who stayed on throughout.
The main characters seem most at ease when left undisturbed in uninhabited settings, such as when they drive a railway car along deserted tracks, gaze at a lake in an abandoned quarry or convert a rundown stable into their home.
Qosya said he had difficulty raising funds for the movie in a region struggling to provide the population with basic services like health care. But eventually Kosovo's authorities agreed to foot the 600,000 euro bill.
Croatia's Jadran Film provided the equipment, and the all-Albanian cast and Qosya worked without pay. "Kukumi" is in the competition programme for the best regional movie award at the Sarajevo festival.
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The concept of mental patients doing better in a chaotic situation than the sane has been done before, it's a little improbable but it makes a point.
The reality was that the mentally ill suffered very greatly in all the wars in the region. Mentally ill people were under institutional care unlike in the U.S. where most mentally ill people are on special drugs and are relatively free.I don't know that they coped any better. Still sounds like a good movie and I hope people outside the Balkans will have the chance to see it.
# posted by Katja R. @ 10:44 AM 
