Reconciliation

Synopsis

An 18-year-old girl is killed in a bitter family feud in the Albanian highlands. Her bereaved father is torn by the pressures from a local bishop and an NGO chairman from the capital, not only to forgive the imprisoned killer and his family, as a Christian, but to reconcile with them – as the age-old tribal code, Kanun, once required. A poignant and insightful account of a patriarchal society caught between a lingering past and a precarious present.

director's statement

Reconciliation is a slow-burning observation of a male conflict in a highly patriarchal Balkan society. A young woman lost her life in the crossfire. My eye, and the camera, focused on the men making decisions about her legacy, witnessing the reality of conversations and rituals – from which, from times immemorial, women were excluded.

There are such conflicts in every family, every society everywhere. Yet here, in Albania, the protagonists were facing profoundly complex circumstances. The dramatic social situation in the 1990s saw the revival of old value systems, along with a half-forgotten ancient code of law, the Kanun. A quarter of a century later, the protagonists in my film still cannot agree on which value system to rely on to resolve the conflict.

The father’s wounds of the past spoke to Albania, and the Balkans, looking back to centuries of unresolved conflict, with differing perspectives. And now, they stood for Europe, where the rising far-right populism is serving to the disenfranchised old solutions for modern problems. The film, together with the protagonists, seeks meaning in a precarious present, and asks difficult questions.

With Reconciliation, I aimed to offer a nuanced portrayal of patriarchy, and a woman’s observation of a feud in it – one that the audiences can also read from the face of the mother in my film, standing silently in the corner.

Crew

director
Marija Zidar
director of photography
Latif Hasolli
editor
Uroš Maksimović
Composer
Dimitrije Vasiljević
sound designer
Miloš Drobnjaković
sound mixer
producer
Film format 
digitalni 2K 
Video format 
 
Lenght 24fps 
82' 
Length 25fps 
 
Sound 
5.1 theatrical 
aspect ratio 
1,85:1 
color 
color 
language 
albanski 
translation 
slovensko, english 
 
 

produced by

Vertigo

Kersnikova 4, SI - 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenija
Tel.: +386 1 439 7080
Fax: + 386 1 430 3530
E-mail: info@vertigo.si


co-produced by

RTV Slovenija

Kolodvorska 2-4
SI - 1000 Ljubljana
Slovenija / Slovenia


financed by

Eurimages

with the participation of

Viba film

© 2009 - 24 Vertigo