Bota (World) which has received funding from the Council of Europe’s Eurimages Fund and the Global Film Initiative will show on July 5 and 6 at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the East of the West Competition.
TIRANA, June 9 – Bota (World), a feature film directed by Albania’s Iris Elezi and Thomas Logoreci will make its world premiere at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic next July.
The movie which has received funding from the Council of Europe’s Eurimages Fund and the Global Film Initiative will show on July 5 and 6 at the town of Karlovy Vary, some 130 km west of Prague, in the East of the West Competition.
“Bota (Albanian for “the world”) is a cafe situated on the edge of a vast area of marshland in a remote part of Albania, and it is here that the lives of the protagonists intersect in this compelling debut by Iris Elezi and Thomas Logoreci. The directors skillfully exploit the genius loci of the desolate landscape and, aided by a period score and beguiling long shots, they flawlessly evoke the atmosphere of a place where the past still encroaches upon people’s lives,” says the festival on its website about the Albanian movie.
Iris Elezi’s movie is set in a remote Albanian village, where employees of a small caf页ncover secrets about each other, and their community’s murderous political past, as one of their colleagues discovers the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of her family.
“Albania, present day: Juli, Ben and Nora live in a small, far off village where their entire families were exiled during the country’s half-century of communist rule. A big, green neon sign that reads ‘Bota’ hangs above the door of the one-floor caf鮠Next to this charming hideaway is a mysterious, murky swamp.”
“BOTA, my first fictional film will most resemble a contemporary Days of Heaven, with spare, precise framing that will move at times from wide vistas to extreme close-up’s of objects amid naturalistic settings,” director Elezi has earlier said.
Co-director Thomas Logoreci, a San Francisco native of Albanian descent who has moved to Albania in the past few years said cooperation with Iris Elezi, who would later become his wife, started in 2008 during the Tirana International Film Festival.
“During the frantic fest week, I met Iris Elezi, a talented cineaste who pitched me her script titled BOTA, which she intended to direct. We ended up reshaping the story together – a group of outsiders working in a caf顡t the edge of a haunted swamp cope with the arrival of a highway,” Logoreci has told the Global Film Initiative, a U.S.-based, not-for-profit organization specializing in the support of independent film from Africa, Asia, Central & Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is ranked by Paris-based International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF) among the most prestigious world film festivals and is considered the most important film event in Central and Eastern Europe, a region of 18 countries with a population of approximately 190.000.000 people.
“This year’s selection of competing films offers an exciting mixture of outstanding films whose completion has been eagerly anticipated. Many of the filmmakers, who explore less frequently trodden paths of cinematic expression, come from the countries of the former Eastern Bloc, which the KVIFF has long focused on,” said the festival’s artistic director Karel Och.
The festival is scheduled to take place from July 4 to 12 in the town of Karlovy Vary, located 130 km west of Prague near the German border.
