Trauma, Memory, and the Politics of Mourning in New Albanian Film from Kosovo

A quarter century since the wars of Yugoslav dissolution were ended in 1999 by NATO bombardment, film production observing the wars through a critical lens can still be called quite meager. In the past few years, however, an increasing number of Albanian filmmakers from Kosovo have emerged, exposing the consequences of the war as well as the continuing legacy of strict patriarchal norms and post-war lethal capitalism. In the films discussed in this article – Zana (2019) by Antoneta Kastrati, Hive (2021) by Blerta Basholli, and Three Windows and a Hanging (2014) by Isa Qosja – the suffering of the female protagonists is pitted against the collective trauma and thus coopted by the same nationalist-­capitalist thanatopolitics that created the conditions for the wars, and continues to regulate, restrict and repress survivors' memory and mourning practices. The films' female protagonists defy these restrictions, resisting through silent stoicism and 'agonistic mourning'.