In 2022, we shot a documentary about the people who went missing during and in the aftermath of the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo. We asked Bekim and Jasmina to once again recount their stories, as well as the stories of the relatives who were taken from them.

This documentary is about absence. Absence of people, absence of truth, absence of closure. But it is also about the absence of institutional willingness and capacity to find Kosovo’s missing — 1,617 in 2022 and 1,597 today.

It is about the absence of the many other family members of missing people who refused to share their stories, exhausted from publicly exposing and reliving their loss, knowing that their trauma fails to compel those who have the power to bring their loved ones home to do so.

Bekim and Jasmina give us a glimpse of what happens to those left behind, and how life stumbles upon, around and against loss that can’t be shaken, memorialized, or stopped.

This documentary was produced with the financial support of the European Union as part of the project “Mobilizing media and CSOs to support the right to information regarding missing persons in Kosovo.” Its contents are the sole responsibility of the implementing partners Kosovo 2.0 and Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.