TWO SUMMERS IN KOSOVO
Christopher Bobyn, Andrew Lampard | Kosovo 2009 | 114 Min. | OmeU
Before Iraq and before Afghanistan the United States bombed Kosovo. Ten years later, the former Serbian province remains impoverished, ethnically fractured, and dependent on the international community. Two Summers in Kosovo is about what it means to live in a perpetually frozen conflict, a purgatory forgotten by the rest of the world.
The film documents the lives of Kosovo Serbs and Albanians six months before and six months after the declaration of independence in 2008. In 2007, the film introduces us to six Kosovo Albanians and five Kosovo Serbs. Through the lives of these 11 subjects, the film explores Kosovo’s segregated education system and entrenched political corruption, its refugee centres and ethnic enclaves, and finally, the folly of the International Community’s “nation-building” regime.
In the summer of 2008, we rejoin our subjects six months after Kosovo’s Albanians unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. Through the fog of transition, the film’s characters emerge, deeply shaken by the terror of their actuality. Their plights have worsened. Too little has changed, few too many promises have been delivered. Now each character, regardless of their ethnicity, is faced with a dire question: can they survive in Kosovo without hope?
