Piro Milkani

In post-communist Albania, two Italian con artists establish a fictitious shoe factory to embezzle government funds. When their elderly Albanian figurehead disappears, the younger accomplice sets out to find him, embarking on a journey that confronts him with the country's poverty and troubled past.

Albania 1997. Some ghostly, deteriorated video footage keeps Julien awake and obsesses him every night. Almost two decades after the murder of his wife, Angela, Julien returns to Albania with a determination to investigate her mysterious death, amidst a sea of impossible records, police files and visions of Beyond.

Georgia, the Soviet Union, 1937. Two boys, a Greek and a Georgian, meet and become friends. From their carefree, everyday routine and the calm, humorous life of the small neighborhood, emerges the tragedy of the period with the persecution of the Greeks, who were exiled and imprisoned.

Albania and neighboring Yugoslavia officially broke ties in 1948. But in 1971, the Hoxha regime was honored to welcome the ethnic Albanian actor Bekim Fehmiu (1936-2010), at the time an international star in Yugoslav theater and film. Before his trip to Albania, Fehmiu had appeared in the popular Italian television smash The Odyssey (1968) and the Cannes-winning I Even Met Happy Gypsies (1967). Dokufest will also feature a photo exhibit of recently-discovered still images taken during Bekim Fehmiu’s Albanian visit.

This lyrical comedy story takes place in two hot days in the small South Bohemian village. On the shore of a small pond, summer guests and local youth meet. As is typical of the works of Hrubín, it is a conflict of youth and age, life and death, represented by the medical student Zuzana and her beloved Jirka.

Bekim Fehmiu was the first Eastern European actor to star in Hollywood during the Cold War, and he was one of the internationally best-known actors.