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The story happens in the
first couple of days after NATO troops enter Kosovo. After the
signing of the military agreement in Kumanovo, the uniformed
Serb guards, placed at the institution for mentally challenged
people, leave their posts and flee. Everyone who worked in this
institution joined them, leaving the patients alone without any
supervision. Being free give them a chance to make dreams come
true, but they are confronted with a reality and environment,
which is very different in one way or another. From the moment
of getting out of the fences, they are conflicted with the
people that call themselves free. Gradually this conflict
roughens and with it degenerates the meaning of freedom. There
are three main characters, Kukum, Mara and Hasan. They also move
out from institution and split up from the crowd. They go
through their own vicissitudes that makes the essence of the
story. Every one of them has their own dreams, plans and visions
for freedom. They try to incorporate it in this new environment.
But there are a lot of obstacles… Freedom is not what they
imagined. Nobody accepts them.
"When NATO intervented Kosovo and after the war was over, Kosovo
became free. Everyone was thinking that freedom makes possible
for us to do everything we want, going to any place that comes
to your mind, in other words being free. I thought people who
have suffered violence and abuse by the machinery of a notorious
regime would have more understanding for every human being,
every situation… But what really happened?! Instead, they became
cruel, loosing their sympathy, dehumanizing and manifesting
freedom by denying it to the others…a strange kind of freedom.
The film is a metaphor of freedomand postwar people; those who
suspiciously observed everything and the others who need only a
bit of this freedom. Three persons, let them call mental
patients, wish to meet people, to love each other, to make love,
travel by train, smoke… They meet obstacles in fulfilling these
very human needs. While some people make fun of them, the others
suspect that their village might become insane by “their
insanity”. The free space of these characters becomes narrower
while their desire faints. Ultimately, they don’t get
understood, but they get abused and chased all the time with no
mercy."
Isa Qosja |