The Forgiveness of Blood

Joshua Marston, best known as the director of drug mule story MARIA FULL OF GRACE, gives us here a poignant depiction of blood feuds in northern Albania Albania. The script was written in collaboration with Andamion Murataj and the actors are all Albanians, some of them amateurs, speaking the authentic Gheg dialect of their region.

Nik (Tristan Halilaj) is in his last year of high school and dreams of opening an internet/computer game café in his small town. His sister Rudina (Sindi Lacej) hopes to go on to university. Their dreams are dashed, however, when their father (Refet Abazi) kills a neighbour in a dispute over land. To avoid revenge attacks from the dead man's family, the males of the family are forced to stay inside their home at all times, a situation that could last for years while the community mediates the feud. With the father out of work, Rudina is forced to drop out of school, deliver a bread route, and buy contraband cigarettes to sell at a profit.

Marston and his co-writer are clearly interested in depicting the intersection of two worlds in Albania: mobile phones and cheap motorbikes alongside ancient laws that hold a man's honour sacred. What weakens the film, however, is that nowhere is it made clear that blood feuds are not a typical feature of contemporary Albanian life: while they briefly erupted in the early 1990s after the fall of Communism, and some families still live under them, it is very unusual for one to start today. Without mentioning that things have changed, this film misrepresents Albania and misleads Western viewers towards a Boratish caricature.

Note how other reviews here and elsewhere tend to commend the film more for "teaching them something about Albania" than for cinematography or acting. The camera-work is completely unimaginative, lacking any carefully composed tracking shots and depending far too often on a seasick shaky hand-held camera following a walking actor. While the acting isn't outright bad, the deficiencies in the script only make their amateur effort stand out. While life for the men in the family is tedious as they can't step out of the house, this point is already sufficiently made by halfway through the film, and yet the script goes on and on without anything more to say. The ending seems ad hoc and doesn't really follow from the body of the film.

An Albanian family is torn apart by a murder, resulting in a blood feud. This is a very good film about a generation gap in Albania. The grownups live in the old world, according to the old laws of the land (well the laws of North Albania, since blood feuds are mostly found there). The younger generation does not see any point to the tradition and unlike the grown ups sees other ways of solving problems.

If you watch this because you want to see a film about blood feud you will be disappointed. Watch this as a film about generation gaps. Keep in mind while watching this that there where only a handful of cars in the country when the father of this boy grew up. And the boy has a mobile, computer and the whole world at his finger tips. Albania took a 100 year jump into modern time in just 10 years. The difference between the generations is therefore greater than in most other countries in the world.

I have lived in Albania and I'm married to a woman from Albania so this film really spoke to me. It is surprisingly well directed. It is hard to believe that the director does not speak a word in Albanian and managed to get such natural acting out of the cast and have such good insight into Albanian culture.

The film is very well filmed. The camera is primarily there to tell a story and support that story, not to make postcard pictures to admire. And it does that very well.

The style of the film reminded me of the films by the Dardenne brothers. Very realistic, low scale and natural. I do think it helps watching this film from that point of view. This is a character driven film, not plot driven.

Another surprisingly good film from the director of Maria Full of Grace (2004).

This powerful film immerses us in an ancient culture that continues to exist in modern times. Even as the inhabitants of the Albanian village enjoy television and the young use their cell phones to communicate, freshly-baked loaves of bread are delivered by horse-drawn cart. Without the glimpses of modern technology, we would think we were watching a drama from the 19th Century because of the nature of the feuding (stones placed on a dirt road to block passage) and the very clear, iron-clad rules from the Kanun for resolving the fallout from the feud that escalates to violence The film illuminates the powerful strictures under which the two feuding families live. Honor and respect may seem to us strange concepts to employ, following what we would consider a felonious crime and a matter for the police and a governmental system of justice, but the Kanun lays out the terms under which those who are deemed to have harmed another must isolate themselves and their families. Tradition provides a pathway to settling the feud, but there is no timetable for ending the state of being a pariah. It is the entire family who is societally harmed when the father takes a feud to its ultimate level.

This is a small Albanian movie about a blood feud in a small Albanian town. Rudina and Nik are normal kids in a relatively poor family. Their father earn a living delivering bread in the neighborhood. Access to a disputed road causes problems with the neighbor. When the father and a uncle kill that neighbor, only the uncle is caught. The neighbor's powerful family seeks retribution or blood feud. Age old customs causes more and more problems for the young kids who remain.

There is an amazing underlying subject being dramatized. The old customs is just harrowing. However the movie moves a bit slow and the power of the situation is dissipated. The other missed opportunity is the actual attack that starts the entire story. It seemed obvious that they needed to show it. The power of brutality itself is needed given the subject of the movie is a blood feud. It seems odd that we're missing that scene.

Back in the 15th.Century, a certain prince Leke Dukagjini gathered together a collection of Albanian traditional customs and cultural practices that came to be known as "The Kanun of Leke Dukagjini." This collection was passed down by word of mouth from one generation to the next, and has governed the way Albanians have behaved pretty much ever since. Book Ten section three of the "Kanun of Leke" as it was commonly referred to, deals specifically with the rules in regard to a dispute between one neighbour and another. It states that, should a quarrel between two neighbours, for whatever reason, escalate and turn violent then the victim can invoke the age-old ritual of the blood feud, which states that the victim has the right to kill all males in the perpetrator's family. However, in a somewhat surprising twist, there is also a tradition throughout Albania known as "Besa." Roughly translated, "Besa" means, "to keep the promise" or "word of honour." There's a saying in Albania that says: "Albanians would die rather than break Besa." So while the men remain in their home, and at the discretion of the victim and his family, they will not be killed for the first twenty-four hours the blood feud has been preordained. Joshua Marston's latest film, "The Forgiveness of Blood" – is set in modern day Albania and tells the story of two families caught up in a blood feud. Every day the father and daughter set off in their horse and cart to deliver the bread to the people and café owners in the nearby village. Obviously, they quicker they can deliver the bread the more quickly they get paid. To this end, the father uses a neighbour's land as a short cut. The neighbour resents this and has already placed large stones to deter the father trespassing on his land. The father just removes the stones and goes on his way. The very next day the father finds his access completely blocked, with the neighbour standing there waiting to see what will happen. They get into an argument, but the neighbour refuses to budge. Eventually, the father has to take the long way around. Director Joshua Marston's previous film, "Maria Full of Grace" focused on the risks of becoming a drug mule, and the consequences of putting one's life at on the line, quite literally, by swallowing pellets of cocaine for a quick $5000 once the drugs are smuggled into New York. What made this film stand out above the usual kind of film dealing with the drug scene, is that it showed what the consequences of such reckless behaviour can lead to, even though Maria's decision to become a drug mule was borne out of desperation. Similarly, "The Forgiveness of Blood" is not just a film about a blood feud. It's a film about the far bigger issue of the how the average Albanian is forever trying to escape his violent and troubled past, first under the Ottoman Empire, and then under the Communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha. Like most despots, Enver Hoxha simply eliminated dissent, by imprisoning thousands in forced-labour camps or executing them for crimes such as alleged treachery or for disrupting the proletarian dictatorship. In fact, for the only time in its centuries old history, did the practice of blood feuds cease - brutally stamped out by Enver Hoxha's Secret Police. The Communists were finally voted out of power in 1990. Two years later in 1992, Albania became a Republic. It wasn't long before Albanians woke up to the realisation that the new government was no different from the old government. Gradually the settling of scores by blood feud began to flourish once more, even as the future for Albanians seemed bleak to the point of despair. As the film unfolds, it's hard not to believe that one is actually watching a documentary. This can in no small way be attributed to the fact that the director chose to use a cast non-professional actors, especially Sindi Lacej as the daughter, Refet Abazi as the father, and Veton Osmani as the hot-headed neighbour – indeed, all the 'actors' in this remarkable film, do an outstanding job, and help shine a light on a country that is many ways, will forever be stuck back in the Dark Ages. P.S. Should you want to find out more about the history of this country? Check out a book by Robert Carver called: "The Accursed Mountains." It is a really fascinating look into this most enigmatic of countries.