Dreaming of the sea takes on weightier significance when the dreamer lives in a landlocked country. It’s not just an idle fantasy of beach holidays and salt-rimmed cocktails — though Vera (Teuta Ajdini Jegeni) would like that too — but as Kaltrina Krasniqi’s taut, sorrowful narrative feature debut “Vera Dreams of the Sea” proves, the vision of a vast blue expanse stretching out to a far horizon can also become tacitly political for a widow who suddenly feels the weight of Kosovan patriarchy bearing down on her already burdened shoulders.
Under the high-tension whines and see-sawing violins of Petrit Çeku and Genc Salihu’s sinister, interior-monologue score, we’re introduced to Vera, a middle-aged interpreter for the deaf. As frankly and fearlessly embodied by a terrific Jegeni, Vera is onscreen almost every moment, which is already a coup given that few are the films that take a woman of this...
Under the high-tension whines and see-sawing violins of Petrit Çeku and Genc Salihu’s sinister, interior-monologue score, we’re introduced to Vera, a middle-aged interpreter for the deaf. As frankly and fearlessly embodied by a terrific Jegeni, Vera is onscreen almost every moment, which is already a coup given that few are the films that take a woman of this...
- 11/23/2021
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
The problem with “The Marriage,” a well-meaning but structurally lopsided first feature from Yugoslavian director Blerta Zeqiri, is that the marriage plot from the title is so much less interesting than the love plot at its core.
This is a film that takes place in a cold, snowy climate, and the main male character, Bekim (Alban Ukaj), and his fiancée, Anita (Adriana Matoshi), are bundled up in the first scene as they wait outside a center for missing persons. (Anita’s parents have been missing for over 15 years.) When Bekim and Anita enter the center, we see people placing long-stemmed flowers down on numbered segments that carry the found bones of their loved ones.
The Kosovo War of the late 1990s hangs over this narrative, because any story set in Yugoslavia has to deal with it in some way. But the character of Anita in “The Marriage” does not seem...
This is a film that takes place in a cold, snowy climate, and the main male character, Bekim (Alban Ukaj), and his fiancée, Anita (Adriana Matoshi), are bundled up in the first scene as they wait outside a center for missing persons. (Anita’s parents have been missing for over 15 years.) When Bekim and Anita enter the center, we see people placing long-stemmed flowers down on numbered segments that carry the found bones of their loved ones.
The Kosovo War of the late 1990s hangs over this narrative, because any story set in Yugoslavia has to deal with it in some way. But the character of Anita in “The Marriage” does not seem...
- 12/8/2018
- by Dan Callahan
- The Wrap
A version of this story about “The Marriage” first appeared in the Foreign Language Issue of TheWrap’s Oscar magazine.
“The Marriage,” the first feature from award-winning shorts director Blerta Zeqiri, is a love triangle of sorts between a couple who are about to be married and the groom-to-be’s gay lover, who returns to Kosovo and stirs up old but repressed feelings.
The film is Kosovo’s entry in this year’s Oscar foreign-language race, and this interview is one of a series of conversations TheWrap is having with the foreign directors.
Also Read: Oscars Foreign Language Race 2018: Complete List of Submissions
When we spoke in 2013, you said that you and your husband were writing a film about gay rights in Kosovo. Is this that film?
Blerta Zeqiri Yeah, it took us this many years to write it because I wanted to do the film with improvisations, the...
“The Marriage,” the first feature from award-winning shorts director Blerta Zeqiri, is a love triangle of sorts between a couple who are about to be married and the groom-to-be’s gay lover, who returns to Kosovo and stirs up old but repressed feelings.
The film is Kosovo’s entry in this year’s Oscar foreign-language race, and this interview is one of a series of conversations TheWrap is having with the foreign directors.
Also Read: Oscars Foreign Language Race 2018: Complete List of Submissions
When we spoke in 2013, you said that you and your husband were writing a film about gay rights in Kosovo. Is this that film?
Blerta Zeqiri Yeah, it took us this many years to write it because I wanted to do the film with improvisations, the...
- 11/18/2018
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
Alen Drljevic’s film received the award for best Balkan film.
Kosovo’s Prishtina International Film Festival (PriFest) celebrated its 10th edition last week (July 17-22), with Men Don’t Cry, the feature debut of Bosnian director Alen Drljevic’s receiving the award for best Balkan film.
The drama about the bloody conflict in the former Yugoslavia takes place in an empty Serbian hotel. It premiered at Karlovy Vary last year, and has subsequently screened at festivals including Sarajevo, Hamburg and Chicago.
It screened in Prishtina in the ‘Honey and Blood’ programme of Balkan films. The ‘Honey and Blood’ jury...
Kosovo’s Prishtina International Film Festival (PriFest) celebrated its 10th edition last week (July 17-22), with Men Don’t Cry, the feature debut of Bosnian director Alen Drljevic’s receiving the award for best Balkan film.
The drama about the bloody conflict in the former Yugoslavia takes place in an empty Serbian hotel. It premiered at Karlovy Vary last year, and has subsequently screened at festivals including Sarajevo, Hamburg and Chicago.
It screened in Prishtina in the ‘Honey and Blood’ programme of Balkan films. The ‘Honey and Blood’ jury...
- 7/25/2018
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
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