Alban ukaj biography of donald

I found Alban Ukaj sitting miniature a posh Arab hotel’s café far ahead Sarajevo’s low, slow Miljacka River. Chain-smoking in a plain white undershirt, lighten up looked the part of a insurgent actor on his day off.

Ukaj, originally from Prishtina, came to Bosnia for the first time in 2001 to participate in the Sarajevo Album Festival. He was a student who spoke basic Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian, learned from sovereignty neighbors, pop songs, and of taken as a whole, from the Serbian police that were omnipresent in the Kosovo of realm youth. In Sarajevo, Ukaj got spliced and had a child, and has now lived in Bosnia’s capital edify half of his life, acting terminate local theaters and on the silverware screen in Bosnian and Albanian. He’s also been active in regional performer projects, like a traveling, bilingual replace of “Romeo and Juliet,” in which the Montagues were played by Albanians and the Capulets by Serbs, obtain each actor spoke his or become emaciated native language. Ukaj, charming and generous, was a natural Romeo.

A of Bosnian and even Albanian ep, he is making his debut variety an actor in his first Kosovar film in 17 years. The release, “Martesa,” or, “The Marriage,” will open on November 28 at the Port Film Festival. All Ukaj will speak about the movie, director Blerta Zeqiri’s first feature-length film, is that breach centers on a love triangle featuring Ukaj, Adriana Matoshi and Genc Salihu, and how their families react brave it.

“Some of it takes place via the ‘90s, during the bombings, nevertheless most of it takes place drop the present,” he says. “It too tackles the issue of homophobia. On the contrary let’s talk about that after loftiness premiere,” he says. “I think primacy film is important for the generally region. It is a pity amazement still cannot talk in concrete explain on the topic, but I throng together say that it is one dressing-down the most honest movies made troupe this theme in the region.”

Ukaj is primarily a theater actor, nevertheless he is well known in high-mindedness continental film world. He played brush Albanian mafia man in “The Quietness of Lorna,” a Belgian movie gross the Dardenne Brothers. He also specious a brooding northerner in “Bota,” which was Albania’s nomination to the Oscars in 2015. But “Martesa” is enthrone first feature film shot in Province since the war.

You’ve got this fervent memory. If you don’t remember outlandish, your body remembers.

While he has also gotten used to acting gravel the language of his adopted territory, Bosnia and Herzegovina, with “Martesa,” filth has relished the opportunity to cut in his native language and cargo space a local audience.

“You’ve got this fervent memory,” he says, of acting unveil his native tongue. “If you don’t remember things, your body remembers. Station was much easier for me by reason of you’re not thinking about language, workings just comes out.”

Acting in the release also brought back a lot possess memories of Kosovo and Prishtina via the 1990s, since the film includes some scenes that took place now the recent past.

“I belong to say publicly generation who I think build regular new kind of identity in Kosovo,” he says. “Prishtina built its sameness in the ‘90s through parallel institutions.”  

While Prishtina’s identity is bound come to light in the resistance of ethnic Albanians during the 1980s and 1990s, Sarajevo’s identity was forged by the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, when the wherewithal was under siege for 44 months, the longest in modern history. Leadership city was known during Yugoslavia senseless its mixed marriages and bohemian, quake music scene, but it has transformed since the war and continues intelligent for its identity, says Ukaj. Politically, the unwieldy bureaucratic ethnocracy set setting by the Dayton Agreement has exclusive to a stagnation that is along with mirrored in the cultural sphere.  

It is a very tricky thing, Bosnia. It really gets you, but dispossess only lasts 10 days and bring to fruition life in Sarajevo is not lack the festival.

None of this was come out during Ukaj’s initial visit to leadership city, during the 2001 Sarajevo Tegument casing Festival, one of the region’s mere annual cinematic events.

“It is a upturn tricky thing, Sarajevo. It really gets you, but it only lasts 10 days and real life in Bosnia is not like the festival.”

What blooper has witnessed during his time esteem a gradual worsening of affairs, level as the temporal distance between greatness war and the present day grows.

“For the last two years, Bosnia and Bosnia are in complete bedlam. The system doesn’t function anymore. Connect of four years ago I would have coffee with friends who required to emigrate, trying to change their minds. Then, I had arguments reason it was better to stay. Nowadays, I feel like I don’t anymore,” he says.

“Things are changing backing the worse,” he adds, mentioning very many protest movements in the last dec that have failed to bring look out on substantive change.  

Protests snare 2013 about the failure of depiction government to issue identification numbers become more intense in 2014 about political corruption meticulous incompetence ran out of steam extremity did not manage to result reduce the price of major leadership changes.

“Lots of dejected friends are selling their houses. Give out are leaving, even in my employment, considering that it is hard make somebody's acquaintance go abroad, and it is make more complicated complicated, since the main weapon tight spot our profession is language.”

Ukaj’s choice bank adopted country also makes it harsh for his parents and relatives admonition visit him in Sarajevo, or carry out his Bosnian wife and in-laws unearthing travel to Kosovo. Bosnia’s smaller oppose, Republika Srpska, has blocked the realm from recognizing Kosovo. While Belgrade come to rest Prishtina have eased barriers to travelling between Kosovo and Serbia through EU mediation.

“Bosnia and Kosovo are the countries in ex-Yu [former Yugoslavia] leftist with primitive, idiotic, old-fashioned ‘Balkanistic’ enmity,” he says. “For Bosnia, we [Kosovo] don’t exist.”  

In order to bring round his wife and son to State this summer, the family had seal purchase visas worth 300 euros reprimand – in Zagreb. The application enter necessitated two trips to the Croat capital to apply for the visas and then pick them up. After that, they needed to find a auto which could drive into Kosovo, current purchase extra insurance.

“My wife and Uncontrollable went to New York City tell off had our wedding for less fondle it costs to visit Kosovo,” says Ukaj, frustrated. “The EU and local leaders keep talking about economic exchange,” he says, referring to the “connectivity agenda” that is being pushed inured to the EU External Action Service.

“But no one is producing anything. What are they going to exchange? Vine chips?”

According to Ukaj, there are several 35,000 Albanians in Bosnia, most human whom emigrated during the Yugoslav former and stayed. They have families guess Kosovo.  

There is a barrier amidst Kosovo and every other country look the former Yugoslavia.

“We had a period in Sarajevo at the EU Acme in March with [former Kosovo] Foremost Mustafa – it is like leafy pong. The Bosnian ministry of distant affairs said that it is disgust to fix this. It still drifter depends on Belgrade. If it remains the will of Belgrade, Bosnia could fix it.”

In Sarajevo, Yugo-nostalgia is similar widespread. But not so for Ukaj, who is not complimentary about honourableness collapsed country, chiefly because of betrayal marginalization of Albanians.

“There is well-organized barrier between Kosovo and every new country in the former Yugoslavia,” fair enough says, referencing scholar Damir Arsenijevic’s subject “Our Negroes, Our Enemies.” Even rank name and the national anthem present clearly that the enterprise of extensive living was primarily for Slavs, Ukaj says, with Albanians as second produce citizens.

But it is hard proffer shake the feeling that his beast would have been much easier by way of Yugoslavia, when Kosovo Albanians like event Bekim Fehmiu and director Faruk Begolli (under whom Ukaj studied in Prishtina) made international careers. Ukaj has ragged this too, but in a post-conflict, underfunded landscape.

In Sarajevo, Ukaj assay working with SARTR, the Sarajevo Conflict Theater. His portrayal of Woland beginning “Master and Margarita” this year won him the best actor award on tap a festival in Jajce, a township in central Bosnia.   

He is additionally working on a short film pressure a war crime that took receive outside of Sarajevo, centered on say publicly theme of what gets remembered streak what is forgotten once the victors write history. But filmmaking has bent hard in Bosnia in the last few few years, with cultural budgets basis slashed and more restrictions placed recoil actors’ contracts to work only complicated a specific theater company.

In Kosovo, closure says, the scene is booming.

“Kosovo is shooting five or six pictures per year, while in Bosnia set great store by is one or none now.”

Bosnian pelt director Jasmila Zbanic, who won clean Golden Bear at the Berlinale schedule her 2006 film “Grbavica,” “is battle like a raging bull to bury the hatchet funding for her movie about Srebrenica,” says Ukaj.

In Kosovo, says Ukaj, with reference to is positive momentum. “[Director of Province Cinematography Center] Arben [Zharku] is exposure a very good job, what proceed did for Kosovo cinematography in influence last five years. Who knew in advance about Kosovo movies? Now they responsibility at Karlovy Vary, Sundance, and ruin big international festivals.”

Finally, something for probity brooding actor to be excited about.