After many decades in exile, Asllan returns to his childhood village in Kosovo with his daughter, filmmaker Dea Gjinovci, and confronts a place in which the physical traces of his past have largely vanished. Exiled at 19 for his political activism, Asllan left behind his family and lost contact with his mother, whose death remains shrouded in unanswered questions. Together with local villagers, father and daughter transform an empty site into a fragile cinematic stage, recreating fragments of childhood through gesture, costume, light and performance. Gjinovci’s camera moves between the textures of the present and these dreamlike apparitions, while Asllan’s memories of political oppression and personal loss give the reconstruction a deeper urgency. This intimate hybrid, between documentary and fiction, becomes a haunting meditation on exile, inherited memory and the possibility of reclaiming a past that history might have erased. (ME)

Presented with the support of the Consulate General of Switzerland in Montreal , of the Critical Media Lab McGill and of the Leadership for the Ecozoic

Canadian Premiere

The Beauty of the Donkey