Florenc Papas

Albania, 1996. Mira lives in Elbasan with her two sons while her husband works illegally in Greece. Struggling to make ends meet, she invests in a pyramid scheme, hoping for a better future. When close friends migrate, mira grows desperate and sells their apartment to reinvest, moving in with her parents. But the scheme collapses, the country falls into chaos, and mira loses everything. Her teenage son toni becomes violent, eventually arming himself during a riot. Fearing for their safety, Mira decides to flee Albania with her sons. After a dangerous journey, they arrive in Thessaloniki—lost, without Arben, but finally together. At the luna park, they find a fleeting moment of peace.

In the 1990s, Albania's totalitarian regime is coming to an end. Agia, a young woman in a remote village still ruled by rigid codes of honour and silence, is barred from learning her family's craft. In her first act of defiance, she secretly begins mastering the tradition reserved for men. When this plunges her into a wider world, Agia dares to assert not only work and visibility, but also her own desires. Her belated coming of age becomes a quiet rebellion, mirroring that of a nation struggling to redefine itself.

Rudina sets off on a long journey with her unmarried pregnant sister, Elma, to meet their strict and traditional father in the Albanian village where they were born. As Rudina's car makes its way over the mountains, Elma comes up with a plan to enlist a former classmate to play the part of her husband.

Leon, from Frankfurt, returns to his native Albania after 20 years to scatter his deceased grandfather's ashes in the sea and is forced to confront his past and the family he never wanted to see again.