Director’s Statement

Reflecting on my life and the generations that lived during the 90s in Kosovo brought “Era” to life.
The best thing that happened to me in my childhood was when my father brought a VHS video recorder home as compensation for his payment for uploading some trucks at the beginning of the ’90s.
My mother and father just lost their jobs as journalists at Radio Pristina because of the political situation, they were doing all sorts of jobs so we could make it.
We had to survive, and yet we couldn’t eat the VHS recorder, but at least I could watch movies. The only time when I could escape the reality was while watching movies. I was recording everything I could find on a few TV channels at that time, and then I would watch them and rewatch them over and over again while my parents were working during the day. From movies I learned new things, I was inspired, I was allowed to dream, I was free!
I wanted to tell a story about finding freedom in a very restricted world. I wanted to tell a story about fighting for your voice in a world where everyone is lost and mute.
Era is not a typical triple-D Balkan film, even though it happens during one of the worst periods in our history. It is not a war film nor a political film, but it is set in a time when a lot of political turmoil was happening.
Unfortunately, since I was a child I was very aware of the political situation. Fortunately, my parents found jobs as reporters for international news agencies and they were reporting all the time, there was no escape from all the news and all that was happening at that time. Most of the time my brother and I were supposed to stay silent as my parents were listening to the news or recording their daily reports in a 54m2 apartment where we lived six souls: myself, my younger brother, my mother and father, grandmother, and a Pekinese dog.
These were crazy times and this was a time I needed to reflect on. How people can lose everything in a short period, and how they transform to survive. No security, no perspective, nothing, all your dreams shattered, but your imagination starts running wild and you reinvent yourself.
When in crisis people usually return to what they know best, and that is, the traditional values. Matriarchalism that forces patriarchalism.
Although Era’s father is very liberal, Era’s grandmother starts to pressure him. It shows that most of the time women force patriarchalism, mostly because they live in that system, and that’s all they know.
You would think that those values will keep you safe, but they only restrict you further. For a woman at that time, the safest life was getting married and staying at home, even though most of their husbands were forced to escape, and they ended up living with their in-laws and children while waiting for their husbands one day to return.
Society was mostly organized by women, and I wanted to face these different generations of women who have different points of view towards life.
They all had their own lives and now because of the circumstances, they are forced to live under the same roof. The grandmother as the oldest and as the owner of the house wants to have control.
Era’s mother is lost and confused, she wants to keep things under her control, while Shpresa, Era’s sister-in-law is left without a husband and totally without a voice. She even wears a cardigan that has the same color as the walls. She tries to find her voice and freedom, but she can’t, she’s pregnant and has a small daughter who’s going to continue this same cycle. They all end the same. Except that Era doesn’t accept that, and she has to be the one that is going to break this cycle for her and the next generations.
Transformation is never easy, and I wanted to concentrate on a teenager because that’s when I felt most restricted at the time. This “era” lasted for a decade so I lived a part of my teenage years in that “world”. While you’re a child you’re easy to please, or you’re just not that aware of things, but as a teenager, you’re searching for yourself internally and externally. It’s a very sensitive period, you get aware of your surroundings and want to find yourself in it, but in a situation like that, you can’t because you have nothing to look forward to.
When I started working on “Era” it was a different world, I never thought that “Era” could be this actual and this universal as it is today. The world can turn upside down any second for anyone. We just witnessed how our world turned upside down during the pandemic and with everything else that has continued to happen after that.
I wanted to create an empowering film that gives hope and strength to overcome hardships even in the most unusual circumstances. I like to think that it shows that no matter what, we as people are strong enough to overcome everything that comes our way. I wanted to be able to offer a little strength while facing hard times.
It’s a story about courage, resilience, and reinventing yourself while going through extraordinary circumstances.
We are all forced to reinvent ourselves from time to time, circumstances will force us, transform us, and show us how much we can handle and how brave we can be.