Shkumbin Istrefi

Agron disappeared for years during the war, missing in action and presumed dead. When he suddenly re- turns home one night, his family are shocked: How will they tell the others about his return? Many projects have been undertaken in the village in the name of Agron’s ‘heroic death’. If he shows up alive it will create many problems for the beneficiaries of the project: his family is receiving financial help as the family of a martyr and has raised loans on the basis of this income. Now Agron has two choices: either to show up in public or to wait for the projects to end. A month passes and Agron is at home while a statue is being erected in the local schoolyard. He has made his decision...

Set in an area between the Yugoslavia and Albanian border in the year 1968, an idealist teacher wants to cross the border to Albania, where he believes he will find a state of ideal communism.

As their city is occupied by a new organized crime boss, three local gangsters decide to return from Mexico and fight him in a mouse and cat game.

A sleepy Montenegrin village, where most of the natives have emigrated to the US, is the setting for a bitter-sweet tale of three women fighting for autonomy. Suta resists pressure to marry her late husband’s autistic twin, Vezire and Drane must learn to coexist as their mutual husband plans to leave, and Fize tries to find a bride for her son. A stork’s arrival troubles the superstitious villagers.

Drin finds himself unchanged, aside from his experience, at the end of his existential crisis.

Story happens in the first days after NATO troops enter Kosova. After the signing of the military agreement in Kumanovo, in the house of the retarded, the guards and employees leave their places and flee. Inmates are all retarded but they have a special philosophy of life, they have their wishes and their dreams. Being free gives them a chance to make dreams come true, but they are confronted with a reality and environment, which in one way or another is very different. From the moment of getting out the fences, they are conflicted with people that call themselves free. Gradually this conflict roughens and with it degenerates the meaning of freedom. There are three main characters, Kukum, Mara and Hasan.

Shoemaker is based on true events, taking place in the 90’s in the town of Gjakova, Kosovo, where political issues start getting worse and worse, in this way drastically affecting the life of the inhabitants. The story is told through the eyes of Edoni, whose mother dies leaving him at his age of 5 alone with his helpless father. The story passes over a decade and at his age of 15 he starts work at a shoemaker store to support him and his drunken father. His story narrates violence, child abuse, and overloaded work, yet also few beautiful moments he has with his lovely girlfriend, Riga.

Syla, a tortured former political prisoner from Kosova, realizes that his political idealism destroyed his life. After twenty years of mundane life in London, he returns home to confront his troubled past.