Thirteen-year-old Beta dreams of escape from rural Albania after her brother kills another boy, triggering a blood feud with a neighbouring family. Filmed over two years the film documents the family’s fracturing under fear, doubt, and paranoia. In the meantime Beta matures into a young woman determined to forge her own path.
WHY THIS STORY?
Since the end of communism in 1991, life in Albania has been extraordinarily difficult. The 1997 pyramid scheme collapse left hundreds of thousands destitute, sparking unrest that resulted in 650,000 weapons being looted from military stockpiles. Trust in the state eroded, crime surged, and people reverted to a suppressed ancient tribal law (known as 'the Kanun') as an alternative of form of justice. Blood feuds became its most dramatic expression: murder demanding retaliatory killing to uphold family honour, often violently extended in modern times.
Beta’s family exemplifies this modern tragedy. After, a village murder over a petty arguement, and an attempted reprisal, all male relatives of the perpetrator's family fled abroad, leaving the women isolated in a beautiful yet fear-guarded prison. Despite three years of isolation Beta remained defiant - and it was clear the moment we met her we needed to tell this story through her eyes. She had developed her own unique way of escaping into an imaginary world and normalising what no child should have to face.
