Amnesty replaces Forgiveness of Blood as Albania Oscar entry

TIRANA, Oct. 12 – Amnesty has replaced the Forgiveness of Blood as Albania’s choice for the foreign-language Oscar race after the Academy decided to disqualify the latter for not having enough local input.
Directed by America’s Joshua Marston, The Forgiveness of Blood was selected a couple of weeks ago by the Albanian National Cinematography Center to represent Albania in the Academy Award Submissions for Best Foreign Language Film. The movie grabbed the Silver Bear Award at the Berlinale 2011 for the best script written by Albania-born, New York-based scriptwriter Andamion Murataj and was in competition with Amnesty, a movie directed by Albanian director Bujar Alimani.
Marston’s film, shot on location in the Balkans country with a largely local crew and creative team, is about the modern impact of the country’s tradition of blood feuds with dialogue that is all Albanian.
After the director of “Amnesty,” one of three other local films that failed to make the cut, complained, the Academy revisited the issue last week and decided to disqualify “Blood.”
Bujar Alimani had written a formal letter of complaint to the Albanian National Center of Cinematography demanding that Marston’s film be disqualified on that grounds that it was a mainly American production.
Artan Minarolli, head of the Albanian National Cinematography Center, said “The board in Albania voted for ‘Forgiveness of Blood’ for some [particular] reasons. The most important are: The film is 100% in Albanian Language. The story and the support of Albania, too, is strong in this film. The producer is Albanian and one of the major producers here. He and the director spent a long time in Albania before the shooting and developed the script and the project in close relationship with Albanian and technical people.”
Minarolli added that he had tried to explain to the Academy committee in Los Angeles that because Albania has a small film industry it is inevitably closely connected with foreign professionals and all local films involve the participation of foreign creative talent and crew.
However, Alimani, director of “Amnesty” welcomed the decision.
He said that the original decision had been in “violation of the rules of the Academy itself; my protest was not for personal purposes, but because I feel that Albania has cinematographers who can be represented at a world level; selecting my film ‘Amnesty’ as the official Albanian nomination gives hope to young moviemakers in Albania and honors the work of all my staff.”
Marston, who learned Albanian during the making of his film, “The Forgiveness of Blood,” said: “It’s disappointing, to be sure. There was so much Albanian creative involvement in the making of the film. For the Academy to focus only on six key crew positions as the barometer of its Albanian-ness, to me, is sad.”