Tirana Year Zero (2001)
Genre : Drama
Runtime : 1H 29M
Director : Fatmir Koçi
Synopsis
Tirana Year Zero (Tirana, année zéro), is a 2002 Albanian film that tells the story of a young couple in post-communist Albania, at a time when many Albanians left the country in search for a better life abroad. The protagonist of the movie is Nik, who lives in the capital of Albania, Tirana, along with his mother and father. He is in love with a beautiful girl named Klara, who wants to move to Paris to be a model. Nik makes his living with an old truck that belonged to his father, who is now sick, and seemingly dying. Amidst the criticisms of his mother, the confusion and desperation covering the country, and the desire of his girlfriend to leave, Nik is still unsure whether he wants to leave. The film explores the way Nik handles the events of his life.
Young Bundeswehr soldiers Tom and Charly are stationed in Kosovo with the KFOR peacekeeping force. Their mission is to secure peace. Although the brutal war between the enemy Serbs and Albanians is officially over, the hatred between people continues to smoulder. When Tom and Charly rescue the young Serbian Mirjana from the fatal shot of the young sniper Durcan, they get caught between all fronts. They lose their professional distance due to the resulting closeness to Mirjana - who has to learn that her father was a war criminal - but also to Durcan - whose entire family was wiped out. Soon they are entangled in a conflict about guilt, manipulation, love and revenge...
Story of Azem Bejta (1889–1924), commonly known as Azem Galica, who was an Albanian nationalist and rebel who fought for the unification of Kosovo with Albania.
The film "Kosova: Desperate Search" recounts the repercussions and effects of the Kosovar war on the Albanian population. Ethnic cleansings and other atrocities mentally and physically destroyed the people. The entwined destinies of individual persons and families from various geographic regions and social classes are the basis of a closely interconnected storyline. Families are not only looking for their missing children, but also for new hope and perspectives.
Young seamstress Ivana leaves work in the tailor shops in Novi Pazar and accepts an offer to be a waitress in a private cafe in Gusinje, Montenegrin town on the Yugoslav-Albanian border. She meets a waitress with whom she becomes fast friends. Brothers Skeljzen and Becir come to Gusinje from New York for the holidays and meet with the waitresses, starting a love affair. Young men promise the girls marriage and going to America.
During the final weeks of a presidential race, the President is accused of sexual misconduct. To distract the public until the election, the President's adviser hires a Hollywood producer to help him stage a fake war.
The film deals with the metaphor of fear, but hidden everyday formless news about the life of the Serbian population in Kosovo. The film is inspired by a letter from a girl from Kosovo, dedicated to her missing father, read at the United Nations, in which she publicly addresses the difficult life of Serbs, especially Serb children in the enclaves.
In an Albanian town known for drug production and trafficking an elite group of cops set out to end the war waged against the local police.
Living in a crowded, multi-generational household in a small village in Kosovo, the quiet teenager Venera can rarely find privacy. However, when she befriends the rebellious Dorina, a new, liberating world opens up to her. Slowly, Venera begins to push against her conservative family’s expectations.
A documentary unraveling the untold stories and brutal experiences of the Kosovo War in the late 1990s.
Kosovo, winter 1999. KFOR forces perform their humanitarian task while trying to maintain a difficult neutrality between Kosovo Albanians and Serbs. A platoon of Spanish Army engineers becomes unwittingly caught up in the spiral of violence between the two sides.
A love story between a Serbian girl and young Albanian set against the background of current Balkanic conflict.
Mrs. Emily Pollifax of New Jersey goes to the CIA to volunteer for spy duty, being in her own opinion, expendable now that the children are grown and she's widowed. And being just what the department needed (someone who looks and acts completely unlike a spy), she's assigned to simple courier duty to pick up a book in Mexico City. But when the pickup doesn't go as planned, Mrs. Pollifax finds herself handcuffed to a handsome stranger on a plane bound for an Albanian prison. And it's up to her to get them out.
A documentary exploring how Albanians, including many Muslims, helped and sheltered Jewish refugees during WWII at their own risk, and trying to help the son of an Albanian baker that housed a Jewish family for a year return some Hebrew books that the family had to leave behind.
In 1389, the Serbian prince Lazar Hrebeljanović refused to submit to the Turkish Sultan Murat, who was invading Serbia with a large army, in order to continue conquering Europe through it.
A woman hires soldier-of-fortune Carson to smuggle her into Albania by way of Greece. Their trouble is just beginning when they get there.
Sokol is a middle-aged Kosovar Albanian who, together with his family, emigrates from Kosovo to Turkey, and faces the foreign and unknown world. After some time he becomes homesick, eventually leaving his last will he gave to his son that when he dies, his bones will be returned to his native country. He dies near of a cliff at the Black Sea coast. In his native village, the news that Sokol has been returned from emigration are being spread.
A woman who is raped and gives birth to a child in war torn Kosovo, struggles to keep her child.
King Carlos II of Spain (r. 1665-1700) once sent his brother Luis to lead a military expedition into Albania and conquer that land for the Spaniards. Since Albania was a part of the dowry of Luis' wife, it seemed like a reasonable idea at the time. While that expedition and its final battle is the subject of this historical film, the scale involved can hardly do justice to the concept. The protagonists talk incessantly, and by the time they get down to the final grand battle, it turns out to be a skirmish between several dozen men.
The journey of A SINGLE FRAME weaves an exploration of the impact of photography from both sides of the shutter. The fascinating post-war culture of Kosovo serves as backdrop.
After a disagreement with his teacher, a young boy runs away.
Memories split in the space.
“False Aging expresses a sense of lost time, of not moving in step with the rest of the world. In one sequence Jefferson Airplane's Lather asks the question, ‘Is it true I'm no longer young?’ Time makes us prisoners locked in ourselves, like the a small yellow bird who slips behind the back of a playing card, then comes back out in front of it. In rapid alternation, they make a kind of thaumatrope, that spinning parlor trick that suggests a sense of movement in the flapping wings of a caged bird. Here the birdcage has been replaced by chance, underscoring the momentary illusion that the bird is free." - Genevieve Yue
Familiar objects are transformed into a candy-coated vision of war in this seminal stop-motion short by PES.
A surrealistic montage set in motion by a tidal wave and incorporating a samurai battle.
Sergey Dvortsevoy makes his international debut with this astonishingly intimate portrait of a nomadic family on the Kazakh plains. Several scenes in this slow, elegant film betray a certain dry humor -- a child devouring the last of a bowl of yogurt and then crying; a cow getting its head stuck in a pail; and a woman singing to herself, accompanied by her snoring husband. Other scenes capture the nomads' hardscrabble lives -- drunken herdsmen in the grips of existential despair, growling dogs, and a camel enduring a rather grim septum piercing. By the end of the film, the family pulls up stakes and herds its sundry four-legged beasts -- camels, cattle, goats, dogs, and horses -- to a more fertile plain. This film was screened at the 1999 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival.
"In Chakra, I was able to transfer the traditional order of the chakras into a film, starting with the first (lower) chakra and working up to the seventh (top) chakra…" - Jordan Belson
Pollet provides an insight into life on the leper colony of Spinalonga, an island off Crete, through the eyes of Raimondakis, who tells the story of his life to the camera after having been excluded from his community to spend years of his life on the island with his fellow sufferers. Themes addressed include love, community, companionship and death and the importance of these values to all people whatever their state of health.
M. Rasta, a high society con man, is accused of a crime he didn't commit.
This picture shows an old gentleman seated at his shaving table. The razor is evidently giving him a great deal of trouble...
Word & number gag, no camera.
The gang goes to a circus sideshow to visit Dickie and Spanky's uncle, mistakenly believing he is "The Wild Man from Borneo."
This Oscar-nominated documentary short tracks the shift in the relationship of an individual to his work between the 19th century and today. Focusing on how nails are made, we first see a blacksmith laboring at his forge, shaping nails from single strands of steel rods. The scene then shifts from this peaceful setting to the roar of a 20th century nail mill, where banks of machines draw, cut, and pound the steel rods faster than the eye can follow.
Zineb is a psychiatrist assigned to Rihana, a traumatized and pregnant young woman, who was raised as a son by her dictatorial father. Rihana's story awakens repressed thoughts in Zineb's own mind.
Insects are tortured in various ways amidst the sounds of screaming.
A shy old man works up the gumption to meet a woman on whom he has a crush.
After bullies steal his son's lunch-box, a retired wrestler goes on a violent rampage to avenge him and bring justice to the school.
The scene opens on a theatrical stage. The magician enters from the wings, and making a bow to the audience, removes his coat and hat and they disappear mysteriously in the air. He then takes a white handkerchief from his pocket, holds it over his knees, and his long trousers disappear, and behold! he is clad in knickerbockers. He next makes a pass with a magic wand and a table suddenly appears before the audience, on which is a large pile of tissue paper. The magician takes up the paper and shakes it a few times and three live geese fly out upon the floor. This is a highly pleasing and mystifying subject.
A montage of some home movies taken by Archie Stewart (1902-1998), an early enthusiast in taken 16 mm sound films of his family. We see his daughters, Mary and Anne, playing in the aftermath of a January, 1936, snowstorm. Next, indoors, the girls bring in a birthday cake and sing to Archie. He has Anne read to him from a children's book, and a year later, has her read aloud to show her progress. Anne and Mary dress up Pat the family dog in a dress and scarf and hold a tea party, chattering away. Archie's high-pitched voice provides narration on and off camera.
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A man arrives home late and drunk as usual. His wife reminds him that he's supposed to take their daughter out to a play. While watching the play, he's faced with his own drinking evils and how his life would be without them.