A new movie about a rebellious teenage girl’s coming of age tells a wider story about Kosovo society in the troubled 1990s, director Parta Kelmendi says.
The story unfolds just after Kosovo’s autonomy was revoked by the Serbian regime in 1989, a time when political and social upheavals were deeply felt in most Kosovar families. Era witnesses her parents losing their jobs, the family sinking into poverty, and the growing pressure to leave the city and return to her grandmother’s village.
Following the abolition of Kosovo’s autonomy, ethnic Albanians established their own parallel systems of education, healthcare, and trade, a reflection of the growing segregation in the country.
As Era struggles to adjust to her new reality in the village, the dynamics within her family shift, redefining her relationship with her parents.
Her brother, Flamur (Allmir Suhodolli), decides to emigrate illegally to Germany, leaving behind his wife and children. Later, he tells his family that he plans to marry a German woman to obtain legal status and secure better employment in Germany. His parents view this decision pragmatically, as a way to support the family. Era finds it hard to accept.
While collecting coal to cook, Era meets Fatos (Armend Smajli), a man who helps people escape from the country illegally. As their paths intertwine, a romance develops, and Era gradually opens up to him. To avoid police harassment, she suggests that they drink their beers in the car, where their relationship grows increasingly intimate.
Longing for basic freedoms
Film director Parta Kelmendi. Photo courtesy of Parta Kelmendi.
The film, which received the Best Actress award at the Brooklyn Film Festival in New York in June, was shown for the first time in Kosovo’s capital Prishtina last week.
Director Parta Kelmendi says it tells the story of every young person who lived through those years in Kosovo. “Reflecting on my life and the generations that lived during the 1990s in Kosovo brought Era to life, and I think this is the story of Kosovar society in a collective way,” she told BIRN.
The film portrays a young woman longing for the basic freedoms that most people in a democracy take for granted, making the story feel both historical and contemporary.
“This film is about finding freedom in a very limited world. When in trouble, people usually turn to what they know best, and that is traditional values,” she added. “It’s a story about fighting for your voice in a world where everyone is lost and mute.”
Capturing the atmosphere of 1990s Kosovo, Era evokes memories of fear, resilience and change. Through carefully composed scenes, Kelmendi gradually builds a sense of threat and anxiety that something terrible might happen.
“Covered in the grim atmosphere of the 1990s, I tried to tell a story about courage, resilience, and the process of reinventing yourself while enduring extraordinary circumstances and emerging stronger and braver to face the future,” she said.
Embedded in the film is also the experience of her journalist parents, members of a generation that faced dismissal, discrimination, violence, and the uncertainty of a society sliding into war.
“From a human rights perspective, this generation bears deep scars of discrimination and abuse, consequences that hastened the collapse of the Yugoslav federation,” she said. “Yet it was also a fiercely idealistic generation that fought and sacrificed for freedom.”
Kelmendi says building and maintaining cinematic suspense is rooted in her intuitive understanding of “the human fate of that time.”
A generation carrying a heavy burden
Director Parta Kelmendi and some of the crew of ‘Era’. Photo courtesy of Parta Kelmendi
The film also highlights the role of women and the gender perspective in the struggle for freedom within a largely patriarchal society. While exploring women’s roles in the country’s fight for liberation, Era also depicts how women themselves help to sustain patriarchy in a society like Kosovo’s.
“Yet this patriarchy seems somewhat illusory,” Kelmendi notes, “because women hold everything in their hands at home, when the men are absent – at work, abroad as emigrants, or at war.”
With cinematography by Naum Doksevski and themes that explore the experience of an ethnic group living under political aggression, Era avoids framing its story through ideological grievance or conventional romantic drama. Instead, a nuanced narrative balances the personal and the political.
By focusing on Era and her family, the director reveals how individual choices and collective histories shape one another, exposing the subtle intertwining between private emotion and social turmoil.
“This film shows the collective fate of Kosovar society, not as history, but as a feeling – as the lived experience of a generation that has carried a heavy burden on its shoulders,” Kelmendi says.