Children, Kosovo 2000

Accompanied by the soft singing of birds and chirping of crickets, Albanian children in Kosovska Mitrovica confess to the camera the deepest pain they have experienced in their short lives. Their parents were tortured, humiliated or killed. Sometimes, children had to bury a parent by themselves. For the viewer, some sequences are hard to endure; to passively witness the children’s pain, to see their crying eyes and their growing hatred towards another – enemy – nation. Nevertheless, the children seem to need the camera in order to tell their story. Some of them behave amazingly freely and openly. The black-and-white photography, often shot with a hand-held and deliberately over-shaky camera, creates an atmosphere of the apocalyptic reality of Kosovo today. Its devastated villages, completely ruined houses in which some kids are live, seem to come straight from some futuristic horror movie. A broadcast on Radio Mitrovica, in which Albanian children discuss their loss, hatred and possible future, accompanies the images of the divided city of post-war Mitrovica. Now and then, colour images from previous times, shot by the kids themselves, alternate with the monochrome images of the destroyed areas. The music, composed by Tibor Szemzö, brilliantly contributes to the visual expression of pain, grief and human madness. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)