With its premiere, Amnesty becomes one of the candidate movies to represent Albania in the next Best Foreign Language Film category at the Academy Awards
TIRANA, May 25 – After the successful participation in Berlianle 2011, Amnesty, a movie directed by Albania’s Bujar Alimani will finally make its premiere in Tirana. Amnesty, Albania’s first-ever representative film at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival, will be premiered at Imperial Cinemas, at the Sheraton Hotel beginning Friday, May 27. At the 2011 Berlinale, the Albanian-Greek-French co-production directed by Alimani won the C.I.C.A.E. Prize of the Guild of German Art House Cinemas.
Last April, the movie was also awarded three prizes in the 12th edition of the European Cinema Festival held in Lecce, Italy from April 12 to 16.
Amnesty won the jury’s special prize, the FIPRESCI Critics’ Award and the Cineuropa Prize for “the portrayal of the intense story of a society lost in transition, through a love story destined to a tragic end.”
The Albanian-Greek-French co-production directed by Albania’s Bujar Alimani was financially supported by the Council of Europe’s European cinema support fund, Eurimages. The movie was shot in Albania and Greece in the autumn of 2010. It stars Albania’s Luli Bitri and Karafil Shena.
Using breathtaking images without any superfluous flourishes, Amnesty depicts the life of its protagonists in today’s Albania, which is marked by unemployment, economic hardship and patriarchal structures.
“A man and a woman in Albania. Their two partners are both in custody but reforms in the penal system allow married couples to meet once a month for sexual contact. The two meet by chance in the prison and start a tender love affair that looks set to end when their partners are freed by amnesty.”
With its premiere, Amnesty becomes one of the candidate movies to represent Albania in the next Best Foreign Language Film category at the Academy Awards. The Forgiveness of Blood, a movie which grabbed the Silver Bear Award at the Berlinale 2011 for the best script written by Albania-born, New York-based scriptwriter Andamion Murataj, is another candidate movie but has not yet made its premiere in Albania.
Artan Minarolli, the director of the National Cinematography Center, says a commission will be set up by next September to select the Albanian submission. None of the five Albanian submissions since 1996 have been nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
