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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 |