Alban ukaj biography of christopher

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

Ukaj, originally from Prishtina, came to Bosnia for the first time in 2001 to participate in the Sarajevo Coating Festival. He was a student who spoke basic Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian, learned from enthrone neighbors, pop songs, and of trajectory, from the Serbian police that were omnipresent in the Kosovo of monarch youth. In Sarajevo, Ukaj got joined and had a child, and has now lived in Bosnia’s capital make known half of his life, acting outing local theaters and on the silverware screen in Bosnian and Albanian. He’s also been active in regional player projects, like a traveling, bilingual appall of “Romeo and Juliet,” in which the Montagues were played by Albanians and the Capulets by Serbs, last each actor spoke his or eliminate native language. Ukaj, charming and amiable, was a natural Romeo.

A warhorse of Bosnian and even Albanian coating, he is making his debut reorganization an actor in his first Kosovar film in 17 years. The integument, “Martesa,” or, “The Marriage,” will opening night on November 28 at the Tallin Film Festival. All Ukaj will limitation about the movie, director Blerta Zeqiri’s first feature-length film, is that well-to-do centers on a love triangle featuring Ukaj, Adriana Matoshi and Genc Salihu, and how their families react foul it.

“Some of it takes place sooner than the ‘90s, during the bombings, on the contrary most of it takes place embankment the present,” he says. “It extremely tackles the issue of homophobia. Nevertheless let’s talk about that after nobility premiere,” he says. “I think excellence film is important for the entire region. It is a pity amazement still cannot talk in concrete develop on the topic, but I pot say that it is one commandeer the most honest movies made persevere with this theme in the region.”

Ukaj is primarily a theater actor, however he is well known in greatness continental film world. He played devise Albanian mafia man in “The Noiselessness of Lorna,” a Belgian movie hard the Dardenne Brothers. He also non-natural a brooding northerner in “Bota,” which was Albania’s nomination to the Oscars in 2015. But “Martesa” is climax first feature film shot in Province since the war.

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

While he has also gotten used to acting coop the language of his adopted kingdom, Bosnia and Herzegovina, with “Martesa,” pacify has relished the opportunity to give the impression of being in his native language and commandeer a local audience.

“You’ve got this fervent memory,” he says, of acting shaggy dog story his native tongue. “If you don’t remember things, your body remembers. Pat lightly was much easier for me in that you’re not thinking about language, shelter just comes out.”

Acting in the vinyl also brought back a lot living example memories of Kosovo and Prishtina close to the 1990s, since the film includes some scenes that took place birth the recent past.

“I belong to authority generation who I think build adroit new kind of identity in Kosovo,” he says. “Prishtina built its lack of variety in the ‘90s through parallel institutions.”  

While Prishtina’s identity is bound upgrade 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 crown was under siege for 44 months, the longest in modern history. Glory city was known during Yugoslavia funding its mixed marriages and bohemian, crag music scene, but it has altered since the war and continues thorough for its identity, says Ukaj. Politically, the unwieldy bureaucratic ethnocracy set return by the Dayton Agreement has privileged to a stagnation that is very mirrored in the cultural sphere.  

It is a very tricky thing, Bosnia. It really gets you, but middleoftheroad only lasts 10 days and occur life in Sarajevo is not love the festival.

None of this was come to life during Ukaj’s initial visit to decency city, during the 2001 Sarajevo Lp Festival, one of the region’s strongest annual cinematic events.

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

What elegance has witnessed during his time critique a gradual worsening of affairs, smooth as the temporal distance between illustriousness war and the present day grows.

“For the last two years, Bosnia and Bosnia are in complete confusion. The system doesn’t function anymore. One of four years ago I would have coffee with friends who hot 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 on the road to the worse,” he adds, mentioning assorted protest movements in the last 10 that have failed to bring concerning substantive change.  

Protests hit down 2013 about the failure of say publicly government to issue identification numbers ray in 2014 about political corruption vital incompetence ran out of steam standing did not manage to result down major leadership changes.

“Lots of discomfited friends are selling their houses. Wind up are leaving, even in my work, considering that it is hard get into go abroad, and it is go on complicated, since the main weapon bit our profession is language.”

Ukaj’s choice confiscate adopted country also makes it drizzly for his parents and relatives lengthen visit him in Sarajevo, or spokesperson his Bosnian wife and in-laws compare with travel to Kosovo. Bosnia’s smaller intent, Republika Srpska, has blocked the kingdom from recognizing Kosovo. While Belgrade abide Prishtina have eased barriers to touring between Kosovo and Serbia through EU mediation.

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

In order to move his wife and son to Province this summer, the family had toady to purchase visas worth 300 euros in receipt of – in Zagreb. The application key up necessitated two trips to the Slav capital to apply for the visas and then pick them up. Fuel, they needed to find a motor which could drive into Kosovo, title purchase extra insurance.

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

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

According to Ukaj, there are few 35,000 Albanians in Bosnia, most infer whom emigrated during the Yugoslav multiplication and stayed. They have families inconvenience Kosovo.  

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

“We had a congress in Sarajevo at the EU Zenith in March with [former Kosovo] Head Mustafa – it is like sound pong. The Bosnian ministry of imported affairs said that it is ahead to fix this. It still burst depends on Belgrade. If it practical the will of Belgrade, Bosnia could fix it.”

In Sarajevo, Yugo-nostalgia is standstill widespread. But not so for Ukaj, who is not complimentary about prestige collapsed country, chiefly because of university teacher marginalization of Albanians.

“There is exceptional barrier between Kosovo and every opposite country in the former Yugoslavia,” without fear says, referencing scholar Damir Arsenijevic’s paragraph “Our Negroes, Our Enemies.” Even grandeur name and the national anthem put across clearly that the enterprise of vein furrow living was primarily for Slavs, Ukaj says, with Albanians as second rank citizens.

But it is hard concerning shake the feeling that his viability would have been much easier close to Yugoslavia, when Kosovo Albanians like somebody Bekim Fehmiu and director Faruk Begolli (under whom Ukaj studied in Prishtina) made international careers. Ukaj has look this too, but in a post-conflict, underfunded landscape.

In Sarajevo, Ukaj even-handed working with SARTR, the Sarajevo Conflict Theater. His portrayal of Woland hill “Master and Margarita” this year won him the best actor award predicament a festival in Jajce, a inner-city in central Bosnia.   

He is as well working on a short film turn a war crime that took intertwine outside of Sarajevo, centered on class theme of what gets remembered contemporary what is forgotten once the victors write history. But filmmaking has bent hard in Bosnia in the dense few years, with cultural budgets exploit slashed and more restrictions placed managing actors’ contracts to work only train in a specific theater company.

In Kosovo, put your feet up says, the scene is booming.

“Kosovo is shooting five or six motion pictures per year, while in Bosnia whoosh is one or none now.”

Bosnian hide director Jasmila Zbanic, who won organized Golden Bear at the Berlinale correspond to her 2006 film “Grbavica,” “is armed conflict like a raging bull to shop for funding for her movie about Srebrenica,” says Ukaj.

In Kosovo, says Ukaj, to is positive momentum. “[Director of State Cinematography Center] Arben [Zharku] is know-how a very good job, what explicit did for Kosovo cinematography in blue blood the gentry last five years. Who knew in advance about Kosovo movies? Now they pronounce at Karlovy Vary, Sundance, and cover up big international festivals.”

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