Babai

Kosovo, in the 1990s: Gezim sells ciga­ret­tes on the street and tri­es to scra­pe by as best he can, with his ten-year-old son Nori hel­ping him. But Gezim doesn’t want to car­ry on like this; he wants to get out of Kosovo – wit­hout his son, who would only be an extra bur­den on the jour­ney to Germany. Nori, howe­ver, does not want to be left behind; the boy stub­born­ly sticks clo­se to his father. Nori is inju­red in an acci­dent; his father takes him to hos­pi­tal but lea­ves him the­re alo­ne. Nori is dis­ap­poin­ted and angry with his father and so secret­ly takes what he needs to be able to tra­vel after him. Together with other refu­gees, Nori cros­ses the Adriatic Sea in a rub­ber ding­hy and final­ly reu­ni­tes with his father in Germany, who is now wai­ting for his future at a recep­ti­on cent­re for asyl­um see­kers. Nori can now final­ly con­front his father about what he has done.

“In Kosovo in the 1990s, the­re was a social cli­ma­te that I find hard to put into words. What was asto­nis­hing was not so much the pre-war atmo­sphe­re its­elf – which was accom­pa­nied by house sear­ches, arbi­tra­ry shoo­tings, cur­fews and extre­me pover­ty – but rather the way peo­p­le dealt with all tho­se events. The fee­ling among­st Kosovars that things were not going well for their Kosovo was ever-pre­sent … However, the film’s sub­ject is not the poli­ti­cal cli­ma­te. That atmo­sphe­re is the under­ly­ing mood that car­ri­es the film and the frame­work within which my sto­ry beg­ins. The film its­elf tells a very per­so­nal and high­ly sub­jec­ti­ve father-son sto­ry set against a back­drop of exter­nal con­trol. As the con­text is far too com­plex for a poli­ti­cal dis­cour­se, I focu­sed on my per­so­nal expe­ri­ence whilst wri­ting. There are hard­ly any sce­nes in the film that I haven’t expe­ri­en­ced mys­elf or wit­nessed in my imme­dia­te sur­roun­dings.” From a com­men­ta­ry by direc­tor Visar Morina

“Babai” has won num­e­rous awards (sel­ec­tion): Munich Film Festival: Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Actors; Karlovy Vary Film Festival: Best Director; Tirana Film Festival: Best Film; Cottbus Film Festival: Best Debut …

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Germany, Kosovo, Macedonia, France 2015,
104 mins, Albanian, German, Serbian (ori­gi­nal ver­si­on with sub­tit­les)
Written and direc­ted by: Visar Morina
Cinematography: Matteo Cocco
Editing: Stefan Stabenow, Anne Fabini, Maja Tennstedt