Ten-year-old Nori and his father Gezim earn their living by selling cigarettes in pre-war Kosovo of the 90s. Gezim will hear nothing of Nori's mother. He is an expert at escaping the past and now he wants to flee Kosovo, without Nori. But the boy tries everything in his means to prevent his dad from leaving. An accident results. The shocked father takes Nori to the hospital. When Nori gets out, his father is simply gone. Angry, yet determined, Nori sets out on a perilous journey to find his father and indeed finds him in Germany. With the persistence only a child can have, he confronts his father and cannot forgive him for his desertion.

Direction: Visar Morina

Script: Visar Morina

Production: Nicole Gerhards, Nicole Gerhards, Visar Krusha, Tomi Salkovski, Xénia Maingot

Cinematography: Matteo Cocco

Editing: Stefan Stabenow

Production Design: Jutta Freyer

Costume Design: Genoveva Kylburg

Sound: Malte Bieler

Original Score: Benedikt Schiefer

Cast: Astrit Kabashi, Val Maloku

Original Title: BABAI

Original Languages: Albanian, English, German

Subtitles: English, German

Film Production Countries: Germany, Kosovo, North Macedonia, France

Statement of the Director/s
BABAI depicts a pre-war atmosphere in which people become the playthings of abstruse political powers. They sit, a bomb beneath their asses, and talk about the weather. It is precisely this feeling and its naturalness that I want to capture – without comment or condescension. The film's core is Nori's personal story. I imagine the figure of the father as a centre point around which Nori revolves and through which Nori is introduced to life. His absolute trust is destroyed when the father leaves. From Nori's perspective there is nothing that would justify this separation. Nori fights against it with all his strength. His behaviour is an attempt to maintain his own innocence. The pain he feels from separation is less due to the fact that he has to live without a father and more that he must live without trust.

Biography of the Director/s
Visar Morina was born in 1979 in Prishtina, Kosovo. In 2009, he graduated from the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany, with the film DEATH BY SUFFOCATION. This award-winning short premiered at the Max Ophüls Prize and was broadcast by ARTE TV. His last short, OF DOGS AND WALLPAPER, had its premiere in international competition at the Locarno FF in 2013, and was nominated for the German Short Film Award 2014. BABAI is his first feature.

Filmography:
2008 SIRENS, short
2010 DEATH BY SUFFOCATION, short
2013 OF DOGS AND WALLPAPER, short

Awards Won
Karlovy Vary IFF: Best Director, European Cinema Label Prize

World Sales:
Heretic Outreach
Ioanna Stais
Promitheos 18
Athen, 15234, Greece
E-Mail: [email protected]
Phone: +30 210 600 52 60
Website: http://www.heretic.gr/