Honeymoons (Medeni mesec)

Year: 2009
Country: SERBIA, ALBANIA
Run Time: 95 minutes

HONEYMOONS is the first film coproduction between Albania and Serbia. Balkan neighbors long driven apart by hatred, they're still divided over the territory of Kosovo. In this incisive, though often light-hearted, look at the state of affairs in those countries, two young couples (one from each nation) try to emigrate to Western Europe. Maylinda and Nik are Albanians from an isolated community. Nik's brother, who is Maylinda's fiancée, left for Italy three years ago and hasn't been heard from since. Now they must decide whether to flee into the unknown themselves. Meanwhile, a Serbian couple named Vera and Marko are preparing to leave for Austria, for his cello audition with the Vienna Philharmonic. Each couple attends a raucous family wedding before their departures; and, at both weddings, the news is of two recently murdered UN soldiers in Kosovo. As the Albanian and the Serbian couples reach the borders to the West, Marko and Nik are arrested under suspicion of involvement with the murders. Veteran director Goran Paskaljevic, who fled Serbia for France during the 1990s, insists his film is an apolitical attempt to show the similarities between the nations. Still, both Serbians and Albanians have protested its making. (In Albanian, Serbian, and Italian and Hungarian with subtitles) – B.B.

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