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 the favorite to represent Albania
TIRANA, Sept. 20 – Amnesty, Maya, Balkan Bazaar and the Forgiveness of Blood are the four candidate movies the National Cinematography centre has short-listed to represent Albania in the 2012 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 the favorite. The movie is now showing on Albanian cinemas. 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.
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 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 realized yet.”
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.
