Radovan Karadzic, Sarajevo is not your city, and you have no right to say that it is, just as you do not have the right to say in public, even if it’s in court, that someone has dug up bones around Bosnia and brought them to Srebrenica to make a fake graveyard. This is insulting.
The Sorrow of Mrs. Schneider
| 11 March 2008 | Reviewed by Besar Likmeta
Leke, Karel and Artur, are the 1960s embodiment of Erih Maria Remarque’s characters of the popular 1928 novel “Three Friends.”
Leke (Nik Xhelilaj), with his deep black eyes and Mediterranean charm is the cameraman- an Albanian youthful version of Marcelo Mastrioianni in Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita.”
Karel, (Ondrej Moravec), a Czech, is the director of the film crew. The team is completed by Arthur (Kamil Kollarek), a Slovak with a cheerful attitude, smooth demeanour and a taste for trouble.
| Moravec, Xhelilaj and Kollarik |
As the three characters begin to shoot the movie at the local factory about the superiority of Czechoslovak motorcycles compared to western ones, Leke discovers his enchantment with the lifestyle, erotic exuberance and lightheartedness of the Czech "golden youth."
But the Czechoslovakia of 1960s is not a rosy liberal paradise as it may seem. As the leading characters gather one night to dance in the hotel restaurant under the tunes of local rock music that emulates American rock and roll, an engineer reveals to Leke the truth about the mines where political prisoners work under large levels of radiation to extract uranium, which are then exported as a gift to the Soviet Union.
However, the bearing differences between the “communism with a human face” of Alexander Dubcek and the “Stalinism with an iron fist” of Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha are the milieu for the hero’s existential drift.
When Leke returns to Prague with Arthur to develop the film in the lab, which they have promised to screen to the director of the factory before it’s finished, he is notified by his roommate that all Albanian students must return home.
As he waits in the lobby of the Albanian embassy to meet the ambassador, a secretary comes out with a heads down portrait of Nikita Khrushchev.
It’s the time of Albania’s split with the Soviet bloc. Hoxha’s vehement Stalinism is at odds with Khrushchev’s condemnation of Stalin’s crime. The Albanian dictator decides to break relations with the other countries behind the iron curtain, leaves the Warsaw Pact and isolates Albania from the rest of the world.
“The Soviet and Czechoslovak revisionists have betrayed communist ideology, ambassador,” notifies Leke and "like all the other students he has to return home." His note is followed by a warning that if Leke chooses not to return, his mother and sister back in Albania will suffer repercussions.
When the hero returns to Cesky Stemberk he is divided between the desire to stay in Czechoslovakia and the love for his family, condensed by the fear created by the conscious knowledge of what they will suffer at the hands of the regime if he does not return.
| Director Pirro Milkani |
The protagonist's passionate love for a woman mature in years, Mrs. Schneider- the wife of a police superintendent (Anna Geislerová), forms another principal level of the story.
Other roles are cast by Czech, Italian and Albanian performers - Bara Stepanova, Tomas Topfer, Michele Placido, Paolo Buglioni and Kosovar Albanian actress Arta Dobroshi.
The movie is based on the experiences of director Pirro Milkani at the Prague Film Faculty of Academy of Performing Arts where he studied from 1955 to 1961.
Milkani’s careers stretches over thirty years as a cameraman, director and screenwriter. He has shot 24 feature films and dozens of documentaries. From 1998 to 2002 he worked as Albania’s ambassador to the Czech and Slovak Republics.
Together with Jana Tomsova he is also the producer of the film and the author of the story. The screenplay was written by Radek Sofr junior.
The Sorrow of Mrs Schneider is the first Albanian-Czech feature film in modern history. The production was financed by Studio FÁMA 92, the Albanian public broadcaster TVSH, the Fund for the Support of Cinematography and the Ministries of Culture of Albania and Kosovo.
The movie opened simultaneously in Tirana and Prague on February 28.
Besar Likmeta is BIRN Albania Editor. Balkan Insight is BIRN's online publication.
