Forgiveness of Blood, a favourite to represent Albania in Academy Awards

TIRANA, April 27 – 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 could be selected to represent Albania in the next Best Foreign Language Film category at the Academy Awards.
Artan Minarolli, the director of the National Cinematography Center, says a commission will be set up by next September to select the Albanian submission.
Directed by America’s Joshua Marston, the film which made its premiere in the Berlinale film festival earlier this year features a cast of young actors.
The movie focuses on a teenage boy and his sister in northern Albania who are forced to abandon their dreams after suddenly finding themselves drawn into a terrible vendetta. “According to dictates of the Kanun, Albania’s centuries-old traditional laws, none of the family’s male members – not even their young seven-year-old brother – may leave the house. As long as their father is hiding in the mountains and Nik is prevented from showing his face in public, the family has to rely on his sister Rudina, who is now obliged to leave school and take over her father’s affairs.”
Another candidate film to represent Albania is Amnesty, which was also successfully premiered in the 2011 Berlinale where it won the C.I.C.A.E. Prize of the Guild Of German Art House Cinemas. The Albanian-Greek-French co-production directed by Bujar Alimani had been nominated for the Best First Feature Award.
“The film represents the clash between a younger generation with the traditional patriarchal and oppressive structures in their society. Love raises the desire of change but is confronted with the impossibility to be realised yet.”
However, in order to be submitted to the Academy Awards, the motion picture must have been first released in the country submitting it no earlier than October 1, 2010, and no later than September 30, 2011, and be first publicly exhibited for at least seven consecutive days in a commercial motion picture theater for the profit of the producer and exhibitor.
None of the five Albanian submissions since 1996 has been nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category.