Filmfestival Wake up Europe | Screening: Hive

Screening, followed by panel discussion on the topic of rebuilding after the war

Language: OMU Albanian with English Subtitles

ABOUT the movie Hive
Fahrije's husband has been missing since the Kosovo war and, in addition to her grief, her family is also struggling financially.
To support them, she starts a small farming business, but in the traditional patriarchal village where she lives, her ambition and efforts to empower herself and other women are not seen as a positive. She not only struggles to keep her family afloat, but also against a hostile community that longs for her failure.

ABOUT Blerta Basholli (director)
Blerta Basholli is a writer and director; her previous work is characterized by a realistic visual style. Basholli's stories touch on social and gender issues from Kosovo, where she was born and raised. She lived and studied in New York, where she worked on her first film projects. In 2008 she was honoured with the Deans Fellowship of the Film Graduate Program at the Tisch New York University School of the Arts. In 2011 she returned to her birthplace, where she contributed as an author and director on numerous short and feature films. HIVE is her feature film debut, its development she has worked on since 2011.

The event is funded by the European Academy Berlin (EAB) and the Alfred Toepfer Foundation.

Registration for the 18.02.2023

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ABOUT Did We Really Wake Up?

Discussions about European wars are a sensitive and highly relevant issue. Showing three selected films about the wars in the Western Balkans is intended to inform on the one hand, but on the other hand also to draw parallels with the news we receive from Ukraine on a daily basis, in order to raise awareness of emotional, material and institutional ramifications that these wars result in.

Young people in particular often lack information which, among other things, leads to the fact that some perceive the Russian war against Ukraine as the "first war in Europe since the end of the Second World War". We want to point out this blind spot and dare to try to clear it up. By showing the following films Grbavica- Land of My Dreams, Quo Vadis Aida? and Hive, the topics of genocide, sexual violence, coming to terms with the past, or the reconstruction after a war, will be addressed.

With the three film screenings and subsequent moderated audience discussions, the project promotes the exchange between experts from various domains (NGO representatives, filmmakers and film theorists, academics with a research focus on war crimes, sexual violence and reconciliation) from the affected areas and young people. The project contributes to anchoring the wars in the Western Balkans in European memory and to providing young people with perspectives to analyse and understand today's Russian war against Ukraine.

*The event will be held in English.*

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European Academy Berlin (EAB)

The organizer is an international team of students and young professionals from Germany, France, Italy, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Ukraine, who came together in 2021 in the context of a workshop on transnational solidarity in the Bosnian war, to address the issue of wars in Europe and their significance for civil society in light of current events in Ukraine.Europe