Tuesday 18. 05. 2010
22:10 - 00:05
Café 7*Stern

TWO SUMMERS IN KOSOVO

(Directed by Christopher Bobyn & Andrew Lampard, Kosovo 2009, 114 min., Serbian with English subtitles)

Before Iraq, before Afghanistan, the United States bombed Kosovo. Ten years later, the former Serbian province remains impoverished, ethnically
fractured, and dependent on the international community. Two Summers in
Kosovo, is about what it means to live in a perpetual frozen conflict, a
purgatory forgotten by the rest of the world.

The film documents the lives of Kosovo Serbs and Albanians six months before and six months after last year's declaration of independence. In 2007, the film introduces us to six Kosovo Albanians and five Kosovo Serbs. Through the lives of these 11 subjects, the film explores Kosovo's segregated education system and entrenched political corruption, its refugee centers and ethnic enclaves, and finally, the folly of the International Community’s “nation-building” regime.

In the summer of 2008 we rejoin our subjects six months after Kosovo's
Albanians unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. Through the fog of
transition, the film's characters emerge, deeply shaken by the terror of
their actuality. Their plights have worsened. Too little has changed, few
too many promises have been delivered. Now each character, regardless of
their ethnicity, is faced with a dire question: can they survive in Kosovo
without hope?