Twenty-five years after being abducted during the Kosovo War, painter Skender Muja revisits the moment when his art may have saved his life. Muja and many Albanians from Mitrovica were captured while fleeing Kosovo. Held in a school turned detention camp, Muja is ordered by a Serbian commander to draw his portrait, his fate dependent on it. Using Muja’s voice, the film reconstructs this tense encounter, alternating between the intimate act of drawing and the troubled faces of those watching. Sparse and atmospheric, the restrained camera turns the blackboard into a space of both threat and possibility, where art becomes an unexpected form of survival, resistance and hope. (ME)

Presented with the support of the Critical Media Lab McGill and of the Leadership for the Ecozoic

Canadian Premiere

I Believe the Portrait Saved Me