Dua
In this Cannes-awarded film, the coming-of-age story of a 13-year-old girl unfolds against the backdrop of the upheaval of 1990s Kosovo.
Dua and her friends just want to be teenagers and do things that teenagers do: go to school, listen to music, party, fall in love. They manage to cater to their own needs even in horrid circumstances, amid the war and discrimination towards the Albanian population, weighing on them every single moment in between.
The film shows us the period of late 1998 to early 1999, when Kosovo, still a part of Serbia, is in the midst of intensifying war, with constant purges and expulsion of local Albanian population by the Serbian authorities.
Blerta Basholli, director of this great anti-war piece, draws from her own experiences as a teenager and sprinkles it with fiction, making it almost a memoir from that period in both personal and Kosovo history. The film focuses on Dua and her perspective, while the war and violence happens mostly outside of her immediate environment. In some sense, Dua represents Blerta and, at the same time, all children that found themselves caught in the middle of a conflict.
Basholli’s film creates a compelling effect. While immersing us into the teenage bubble, instead of drowning out sounds and images of the rough environment, the reality of war is even more striking, even palpable.
Ljubomir Delevic
Screenings
-
Kino Engel 1Sun 20.9. at 11.30–13.10100 min, 1/3
-
Kinopalatsi 5Fri 25.9. at 18.00–19.40100 min, 2/3
-
Kino TöölöSun 27.9. at 16.20–18.00100 min, 3/3