War in Palestine, heteronormativity under fire, opiates numbing the American Dream — today’s headlines? Or films from 1974? At this year’s Dokufest, organizers explore the recursive loops of disorder. 

Dokufest is an annual festival in Prizren showcasing some of the best in documentary filmmaking from across the globe. Dokufest’s 23rd edition, held from August 2-10, 2024, convened under the theme of New Order. Over 100 films across eight categories are competing for juried prizes, all of which will be screened in cinemas and improvised venues throughout the city. 

Organizers have curated 13 special programs to accompany and contextualize the films. Highlights include “Focus Ukraine,” “No Other Land: Films of Palestine,” and “1974: Then Is Now.” These documentaries engage with past orders, past new orders and orders that will not die, lending the harrowing light of history to any overly-inflated utopias. 

Dokufest is also a platform for Kosovar filmmakers, who battle lack of equipment, funding and technical distribution challenges to bring their stories to the screen. This year’s National Competition collects 14 short films. They vary greatly in technique and scope, but portray universal struggles, from the imbroglio of familial fidelity to the liveability of cities.  

K2.0 caught up with four of the artists behind films selected for the National Competition to understand more about their backgrounds and aesthetic decisions. Their films speak to a spectrum between abandonment and belonging — two poles between which many are stretched thin. 

The films bring an intimacy and immediacy to subject matter that, without it, would lack empathetic resonance. They touch on societal issues in the context of personal histories, using the language of film to explore the nature of truth and their hopes for the new order. 

Irena Aliu

Producer of “Sign”

I’m an actress. I started acting in 1992, when I was in my second year of university. It was a strange time. Because we couldn’t study at school, we had to find other solutions. We had the opportunity to do our main acting classes in Dodona Theater. That wasn’t so bad because we were on the stage from the very beginning. 

When you love everything, acting is the best place to be. One day you will be a lawyer, one day you will be a housewife. I find it beautiful to change, to have the ability to change yourself. That’s one of the things that made me feel, always, that I don’t belong anywhere. Maybe I chose acting because of it.

After I got divorced, I felt that I didn’t belong to my birth family or to my ex-husband’s family. And I naively thought that if I brought back my maiden name it would help me. So I started the procedure. I hate bureaucracy, like everybody else. But I decided I was going to enjoy the process because I was doing something for myself. But then, when I went to sign my name, I realized I forgot how I used to sign. It was then that I understood I didn’t belong to either family anymore. Because I had forgotten myself. That was very hard to take and was the inspiration for the movie [in which the main character has a similar story].

This was the first film I produced and the first script I wrote. I didn’t mean to make a movie out of it — I gave it to Erblin [Nushi, the director] during quarantine. He liked it and applied for funding. I worked on the script for a year after that because it wasn’t supposed to be a movie. I just wrote it because I felt I needed to. 

Some people tend to lose themselves in a relationship. It’s not good. You start to lose your identity, you start to lose who you are. That’s one of the reasons why a relationship doesn’t work — because you don’t know who you are. You change so much that your partner doesn’t know who you are. To be in a relationship, it has to be a relationship of two. You don’t become part of him. I tend to do that.

Now I’m working on myself, not to make those same mistakes again. I’m trying to change something. It’s amazing how we can continue the same pattern over and over and over again. You can’t escape because it’s a comfortable place to be. You know by heart how to do it, you just go in that direction.

Kosovo has a lot of patterns to change. As a nation we tend to lose our identity in anything foreign. Like I lose myself in a relationship, we lose ourselves when we meet these foreign agencies. We have an inferiority complex because we were always occupied. I think that now we have to work on ourselves, to find our identity. Because we used to have it. 

But if we want to build something that will last, we need to go gradually, we need to go step by step. We must have a good basement. If we rush, rush, rush, it’s not okay, it’s movable, it’s shaky. Maybe because we were closed for such a long time — we couldn’t go anywhere without a visa, and those were very difficult to get — that makes you feel suffocated. And when you have a little bit of freedom, when you want to do big things, all at once. We want to do everything overnight. It’s impossible to do that — we have to reach it step by step. 

When I lived in my building, in front of me there were some houses and a lot of fields, it was very beautiful. Now I see only buildings, I’m surrounded by buildings. It was all like that after 2008, we started to build everything, we started to rebuild everything, because we didn’t want to have any kind of memory. We wanted to delete what happened. 

But it’s not possible, and it’s not good to delete what happened. We should know what happened, we should have some memories to show new generations. They have to see those things, because otherwise it will happen again. This is one of the patterns we have. We always want to destroy the old and start everything new. It’s not good for any regime to erase the past. We need that. It’s not good to erase it, because then it can happen again.

I’m middle-aged now, but I would like to see our young people more enthusiastic. I would like to see them more ambitious — to know how to enjoy life more, to find the small things, to have some kind of peace inside themselves, to find that which is crucial for everyone. Because you can’t expect the world to make you happy. You need to find your happiness within yourself, and then things will start to work for you. Something new is beginning, something new is happening. And to start something, you have to abandon the old thing.

Sovran Nrecaj

Director of “Fran and Verka: or a usual day in an abandoned village” 

I used to be, and I still consider myself, a photographer. For me it all started with photography. I carried a small camera with me when I was a kid — I took photos of my family, friends, and then, later, I tried to kind of create some stories through those photographs, starting somewhere around high school. 

But during this process, I found I had some ideas that didn’t fit in photography. So I was forced to find a new format — that was cinema. I never was a cinephile or anything, it just came naturally from photography. It came more like a need, like a tool. I studied then at Sarajevo Film Academy and, after that, I did this diploma film, “Sea by the River and River by the Sea,” which was in some festivals. And then “Fran and Verka.” 

As for this film, I was walking with my photo camera around Vitia when I heard from someone about this elderly couple who live alone in the village. So I went to visit them. In the beginning, I thought it was all about solitude, but then I found something else. For me, it’s a story of belonging. During this year, especially when I came back from Sarajevo, it felt that in this society, many stories are missing. We’re creating a society with empty mosaics — only some pieces are there. What I’m trying to do with my films and my art is to try to show this — to collect these pieces and put them into the spotlight. I want to glorify, to create a hymn for these people who are never seen, but who kept this society growing. Who made this country what it is today.

Starting from my own experiences, not only in Kosovo, but generally in the Balkans, what I notice in people — in friends who I spoke to, also myself, is that the first thing on their to-do list is to leave. So this is also one of the themes I’m working with on some projects right now. There is this inferiority complex about living in the Balkans. I felt like that also, and I’m trying to find out why. For me, this film — as much as it’s about abandonment — is also about belonging. Because there is always this generational clash — one belonging here and trying to be here, and other trying to leave and then maybe coming back. For me it’s one of the themes that is very intriguing. I’m trying to dig more into it and find out why it’s like this.

The New Order theme is difficult. It feels like we’re running in circles. It just feels like we’re kind of repeating, as humanity, we’re repeating our own mistakes. So it’s not a new order, it’s kind of just going back to the cycle, unfortunately. We’re watching how, around Europe, the right is dominating, and it feels like we never learn — we’re going back and back into that. So it’s not a new order. It’s for me, it feels like we’re circling. 

Ilir Hasanaj

Director of “Workers’ Wings”

I was born in Kosovo. My family fled to Switzerland because of my father. He was politically active and jailed for his activism — we were forced to flee as tensions rose in the 90s. And then I had a classic migrant life in Switzerland. 

While I was learning IT in Switzerland, I figured out I really like design. I love visual things, light. But for a very long time, I didn’t know you could study film. I thought only privileged people could make movies — people with a lot of money. I never saw myself there because I thought it was not possible — until I learned you could actually study it. And this became my goal. 

I have a hard time with words, I struggle to explain myself or talk about feelings. It takes me so much time to write an email! And I feel like film has this in between — these colors and shapes that are really, really hard to describe, really hard to bring into words. If it’s a good film or a good image, you don’t need a word for it — it’s right there. It hits you directly. Like a breeze, or a rainy day — people scrambling for their umbrellas — you immediately connect. It’s a very empathetic medium. 

Being a teenager, you go through your insecurities. Growing up I wasn’t the most self-confident person. And also it was a bit hard to deal with my family — I have three younger siblings, so I had to look out for them. Then, of course, you don’t know the language, you’re Albanian — many Albanians fled the war, so we faced a lot of stereotypes and racism in Switzerland. All these things come together. I think I wanted to find an exit from this reality, to not have to deal with it. I think this made me reflective, made me want to find a safe world. Being a migrant made me much more self-critical, but it also made me much more reflective about the world and migration, the West, racism, all these things I wouldn’t have dealt with if it wasn’t a necessity.

When I went to film school, I was very surprised. There was a whole world I’d never seen before — I knew just the Hollywood films. I entered film school with quite a naive way of thinking — that I could do anything and everything is allowed. And during the first half I felt very limited — they were telling me what is allowed, what’s not, how to go — all these rules. I really hated it. It took me a long time to find a way out of it, from all these rules — all these shouldn’ts and shoulds. 

After film school, because I studied fiction, I decided that I wanted to break away from all these big teams, great lighting, all of that. Not just because it’s very, very expensive to make these kinds of things, but also because I felt I needed to be more myself — to be able to fail, you know, to be able to make a scene and not feel like I wasted everyone’s time. To sort of just see where it goes. So I made a documentary called “To Want, To Need, To Love.” It was my first feature documentary. 

It premiered, and won, at Dokufest in 2017. And this really freed me — made me feel that I can try things and I can fail. And it will be okay. And that’s why I decided to make a documentary. That was the film where I first understood my language — the things that I like. I understood what I want to do for the rest of my life — to make poetic films — intimate films where you are really close to the characters. For this film I did the camera, the sound, the directing, everything except editing. 

While shooting it, there was an old guy who worked on the outer wall of a house across the street. He was painting and he fell, hurting himself quite badly because he fell head first. It was a very traumatic experience. There were 10 people standing around, and the ambulance was on the way, but it was stuck in midday traffic. So everyone just had to wait while this older man was in terrible pain. And it was weirdly visual, because his blood started to expand out, slowly, beneath him. It stayed with me for a very long time. That was back in 2017. From that day I knew I wanted to make this film. But I want to challenge myself — to not just copy myself, but, in every film that I do, I want to learn as much as I can. I guess this is why making this film pushed me to my limits. 

Shooting on film is a whole different process. You are very limited on the amount of what you can shoot, because the rolls are very expensive. And also it was really complicated to bring the film to Kosovo. I had to deal with customs a lot. And doing documentary is even harder, because usually when you have a fiction film, the scene is set, you know — everyone is working for the camera. But with documentary you cannot just say, oh, let’s do it again.

I worked with Vigan Nimani, who isn’t actually a cinematographer. He’s a painter with a wide knowledge of analog photography. And so this was also very challenging — to work with somebody who comes from a different sensibility. I guess this is how it came together. The film should be a contrast between the people who experience these accidents and the system that oppresses them. 

Shooting film started as a joke. One night Vigan told me “if you shoot on film, then I’ll work with you.” And I said, “Yeah? Then we will shoot on film!” And it was, you know, half joke, half real. I always hated when people chose the medium before the story. I think the story has to be first. It is the thing that drives everything. But — it’s not a but, I think this is the reason why — I was so intrigued by the faces of these men, the workers. They have these deep lines. Some workers look 10, 15 years older than they actually are. And so, for me, it felt really wrong to use a material that is so clean, so perfect. I wanted to have something that also is imperfect, that has this kind of rawness, these kinds of lines, as the workers do. 

I didn’t want the film to have this feeling of “oh, look, they’re victims.” That approach felt very bad. It feels like being in a zoo. Like “Look! They have no legs!” So I really wanted to use as few words as possible, to tell as much as possible visually. And to say only the things that are really, really needed. But every single one of the workers talks about abandonment. 

When I began my research, before shooting the film, it was horrible what I discovered about how much doesn’t work, how this system of oppression is kept alive. These are cases where the companies don’t give contracts, don’t pay taxes, hide the real number of workers. They don’t pay taxes because they tell the workers, “look, I can pay taxes, but it would mean we can only give you 350. But if you want 400, then I won’t pay it, and you won’t say anything.” And for these people 50 euros is life-changing. So of course they won’t say anything. And then when an accident happens, these owners say “this person never worked here.” Also, most people work from the same area, the same village — uncles all working together. So if something happens to one of them, they cannot take the company to court because it would mean all the others lose their jobs. 

There are still other other issues — even if they go to court, the lawyers make deals with the company, or their cases get lost, or indefinitely postponed. I even had a case where a worker had an accident with two others in a broken elevator — they pressed charges. Even though the workers won the case after 10 years, the company said they couldn’t pay. So the court ordered the worker — who had lost a leg — to go get the company’s machines and sell them. To get the money. It’s completely ridiculous. It’s problematic on so many levels. Also there is no union to help the workers. I couldn’t find a single one.

New Order always sounds like revolution. But seeing the war in Gaza — I mean, we call it a war, but it’s actually oppression — and seeing what’s happening in Ukraine… we’ve had so many revolutions, we’ve had these new orders, but this is the best that we could do? This is our best humanity? It doesn’t give me much hope in that sense. But still, I cannot exist without hope. And so I try to do what I can and to do it with passion and hope that other things will follow. But I think it means new orders should destroy this oppressive capitalist world we created, which sounded very hopeful in the beginning. 

Norika Sefa

Director of “Like A Sick Yellow”

I’m a film director, writer, producer and, most of the time, an editor. I do my films by myself because they’re a mix of documentary and fiction, so I like to be involved in all the phases. My first feature film, “Looking For Venera,” established me much more than my previous shorts. Now I have this short “Like a Sick Yellow.” Many people found it a bit weird that I did a short after a feature film. But I thought it was so important — the story must be told. 

I was born in Kosovo. I lived in Denmark and then in Prague for a long time. I’ve made films in many countries, but I would love to do more films in Kosovo. I would like to understand its nuances. There is no other place I get people more than in Kosovo. It’s a place where you can really change the narratives because the country itself is going through so many transitions. It’s so interesting to pay attention to how people are thinking about themselves. It brings up a lot of questions and keeps me curious.

In my family we always had a 60 millimeter camera. A lot of the footage from “Like A Sick Yellow” was shot on this camera. I lived in a very big family, and it was so surprising that we all lived in one world, because our stories and emotions so contradicted one another. By having this camera with me, I realized how easy it is to name things, because in a family there is no law. In society there is law. With this camera in my hands, I raised questions. I thought, well, actually reality is a construct, same as filmmaking. You arrange the story about somebody but it’s a construct. So rather than knowing the characters I was much more curious to see what we don’t understand about them. I think this influenced my observative way of filmmaking. I am after a mood, a feeling, rather than stories. 

Stories are very limiting. I struggle with them. One of my biggest influences is my grandmother and her oral storytelling — what she says about herself. In life today there’s this crucial need to define things — it’s very commercial, that aim. Then we go to yoga and do meditation to find ourselves. Many people live in repetition, adrift. So I try to capture this in filmmaking. 

We all reinvent our reality. We say this is my reality. But in a big family, everybody’s reality is so different. Rather than follow a story, for me, it’s much better to understand the mood of things. For my first feature film “Looking for Venera,” I knew I wanted a girl growing up in this small town in Kosovo. I found out that, for a lot of us, growing up meant being so instinctive, so animalistic. We had to understand our territory. The house was safe but outside was fun. So there was all this contradiction. 

I am really focused on bodies. “Like A Sick Yellow” is the same. I had this family footage in my hands for a long time. I wanted to decompose it in order to see these characters, not as people I know, but as bodies trying to make it with each other, as movements. Bodily law and social law are different. To be social you have to adopt a posture and adjust your way of talking. But when you are alone… nobody knows. Nobody wants their deepest desires! We are not crazy enough to even tell our maddest fantasies to one another! So how do we believe that we know others? 

I think “Like A Sick Yellow” touches on this. I focus on the story of the woman — it’s my cousin, of course, I know her story. But from the beginning there is a contradiction in the word story — if you say “oh don’t tell me that story,” you mean don’t give me that bullshit. But then someone will ask you to tell them “the real story,” which means the truth. It’s so interesting.

I had this footage, and many of the people in it died in the war, and many others have gone crazy. There was this madness in a few of the characters I was so curious about. Can we ever know what a person will become? I wanted this character to be seen by others and to see what the others are saying about her — they each have their own story. But I know what happened to her in the end. The film is about a fear of something bad happening, which was very personal for me. There’s this fear in the character — she’s so happy and so afraid something will disturb this happiness. Because she knows it never lasts long. It doesn’t last long, happiness. There’s always something that disrupts it.

I think my film is about abandoning meaning — staying close to instinct. I’m really about that in all my films. Characters often fail to understand, to have a philosophy, to catch on to something. In these cases it’s very easy to be manipulated — emotionally, especially — and to exercise power over another. I feel this is a lot in our society. You have to understand yourself in order to understand the limits of your power over others. Power is not always a danger. It also exists in love, in how much you push into another. In this case, “Like A Sick Yellow” is about this abandonment from a philosophy, from a meaning that is changing too fast. In one of the film festivals there was a description of my film, something like “a girl transforms into a woman without having the chance to grow because life is happening so much faster.” And it’s true. I think you are abandoned, sometimes, by a trajectory. 

I allow my process of filmmaking to be very organic. I work with non-actors. My grandma, my mother, my aunt are often in my films because I like faces I know well. I know exactly what they mean to me. I think they say “Like A Sick Yellow” is fiction, but it’s a documentary as well. There is this narrative, this story, this history that the footage carries within itself. We know it so well, because it touches on the war and the 90s and so on. But if you deconstruct it and you make a new form — if you see it from a perspective of not having to justify the events, but the human beings, I think it brings a new order to how we deal with history. We need to do more than talk about history. We need somehow to reverse it and to question it. 

How is filmmaking telling us what is real, when it’s a construct? We construct based on what we know people will understand. So I think for me new order is like — we have to stop and redo this mechanical use of understanding, because it rushes from one thing to another. If we stop a bit and think: “Why have we taken these things for sure? Why don’t we observe them in a different order? And how do we get there?” I think that’s why I did this short film after my first fiction film. It was constructed using a language we all share. But then it is a construct. It’s not real. So what is this construct and especially how can we push it a bit further in film language? This, for me, is the new order. 

This article has been edited for length and clarity. The conversations were conducted in English.

Feature Image: K2.0.

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