Our Kosovo film on general release
PERSONAL/THE NEW GENERATION/HISTORY/DOCUMENTARY FILM
Nearly five years after the idea was first conceived, we are finally putting ‘Return to Kosovo’ - the film I made with my daughter Emma and my close friends Donald Harding, Vaughan Smith and Leman Muriqi - on general release.
The film tells the story of my unusual bond with a five-year-old ethnic Albanian boy, Besnik, who was the oldest survivor of one of Kosovo’s worst massacres, how we met again more than 20 years after we lost contact, and what happened next.
The story began with a massacre at dawn nearly 27 years ago. Serb forces and irregulars, on the rampage in Kosovo, killed an entire extended family, msotly women and children. A five-year-old boy called Besnik was the oldest survivor.
As a journalist covering the conflict, I wrote about the harrowing event, and later developed a strong bond with Besnik and the few members of his family who survived. For the next year or two I helped them out as I could.
Then - it was the days before social media - we lost contact. I went on to cover several other wars and Besnik, and his two little sisters, slowly grew up, shielded from the details of what had happened on that terrible day by their Uncle Ymer.
Two decades later, as I was sitting in my new home deep in the Canadian wilderness, where I had gone to get away from it all, a Facebook message popped up on my screen. It was from Besnik. He said he had been looking for me for years and had finally found me.
"I want to meet you again," he said.
Of course I agreed. But then Kristin, my wife, died. And Covid arrived. In the end it was three years before I finally got to Kosovo. Emma, my daughter who is an aspiring filmmaker, filmed the reunion. She brought with her a second camera and a sound recordist.
I thought the film project would take a couple of months. But the business of turning a few reels of footage into a watchable documentary is, I learned, an onerous one.
(To see a longer more extensive account of the filming, post-production, and what it's like to make a film with your daughter, click here.)
I worked on it for months with Emma, an old university friend called Donald, and my wartime translator Leman. They dedicated months of work for free.
We also hired two professional editors and shot a lot more material. Vaughan Smith, an old friend who was in Kosovo at the time, gave us some of his best archive material to use. In the end we had a film that ran to nearly 50 minutes.
In the spring of 2024 we finally showed it to Besnik and his family at a cinema in Prishtina, the capital of Kosovo. (Albanian families are large and there was much interest so the sizeable venue was unexpectedly full.)
Then in August it premiered at Dokufest, a wonderfully intimate film festival in southern Kosovo, and received an enthusiastic response. So now, finally, we are putting it out on general release via Vimeo, a streaming service.
We don't expect to recoup the expenses of filming - it was always going to be a labour of love and respect - but the film will be on a pay-per-view basis.
It is a little awkward for me to promote a film in which I played such a central role. And one which is so personal, and emotional. And it was much, much harder for Besnik and his family to open up to a camera and relive the story of those terrible days.
But we all now feel the time has finally come to tell this story in its entirety. You can watch the video by clicking here. (You will need to create a free Vimeo account.) You can also copy and paste: returntokosovodocumentary2024.vhx.tv
Please offer comments and thoughts on the film, either positive or negative.