The Beauty of the Donkey (2025) Movie Script
1
THE BEAUTY OF THE DONKEY
All the stone houses have disappeared.
The war carried them away.
What remains with me is my past,
my memories of what Makrmal used to be.
Here, I'm standing at the corner.
The house was about 14 meters wide,
if I remember correctly, and it was 30 meters long.
It was a big, two-story house.
The house was magnificent and very large.
I don't even see any remains.
Usually, there are traces of old walls.
The hills, the fields...
Our legs were strong,
we had a zest for life,
for laughter, for playing together.
Everything was so present and intense.
All of us were vivacious.
I'll hold this and you grab another one.
Now grab another one.
Don't let go.
I was very fond of my cousins, as they were of me.
You've brought me back to a village
that only exists in my memories.
My father left his country over 60 years ago.
But he carried the images of his past with him.
As I grew up in Switzerland,
his stories
became my only connection to Kosovo
and the village of Makrmal.
They fed my imagination
and my desire to become a storyteller.
In my mind, I imagined a village
tucked between green hills...
like a wonderful refuge.
Are you able to imagine
how this will look in the film?
Yes, very much so. It's going to be amazing.
You'll have to visualize
and guide me through the staging,
tell me where you think people should be.
Yeah. We have to imagine this space
a little like a theater, you know?
Yeah, that'll be great.
I prefer this to having an oda that isn't...
Exactly. real, you know?
It's the beginning.
A great beginning. Absolutely fabulous.
Okay? Yeah.
And on the other side...
The other side, let's paint it white.
The small one or a big side?
One of the big sides.
So plaster on one side and... Yes, with...
Plaster everywhere, except... An old plank.
We don't have enough old planks,
so we could do what they did,
but we don't have a blow torch.
We can age them. That's right, patina.
We can age the new wood with patina
and put the old planks on top. Yes.
All good? All good? We can go back to work?
We're making a very scary monster.
See you later. See you later.
Do you have time to play a role in the film?
Halim. Is that his name?
Hi. Do you have a minute?
We have a shoot this weekend. Oh, yeah?
On Saturday and Sunday. Yes.
Plus another day the following week.
Later? Later.
And we need you for a role.
Yes. Yes?
It's the role of Cena.
Of Uncle Cena.
Oh, my father. Sure. Yes.
Yes. Yes?
I'm here. You tell me whatever you need.
So on Saturday and Sunday.
I'm here at home. I don't go anywhere.
On Sunday, it's really early in the morning.
I wake up at 4 a.m.
Really? I have a coffee with my wife at 4 a.m.
Could you come together with your bride?
To the shoot?
Yes. With my old wife, not my bride.
She's not a bride anymore.
Look. She's an old woman.
Come, Salla, they want to take you to Hollywood.
My name is Leart Gjinovci. I'm 11 years old.
I come from the village of Makrmal.
I play the role of...
Uncle Asllan that...
I messed up.
I messed up the whole thing.
I messed up. It's okay.
Do you want us not to look at you?
It's okay.
My name is Leart Gjinovci. I'm 11 years old.
I come from the village of Makrmal.
I play the role of Asllan Gjinovci
in the film "The Beauty of the Donkey".
One more for the sound.
That was really good.
We'll do another one for the sound, okay?
You got it now. You know it.
It was great. Do exactly the same.
I was nervous.
This is our land.
It's as big as I remember it.
I'll reach some big ones.
I don't want you to fall.
I'm used to climbing my own trees.
I break all the branches.
Throw it.
You caught it? Yes.
You like it?
What a pear.
Do you want to eat corn? Yeah!
Who brought the corn?
You!
I did!
It takes seven to eight days to go there. Where?
To the stars.
They're so far away.
What happened to the house and the village
during the war?
Was my house destroyed before the war?
They destroyed it before the war.
You didn't experience the war here. No.
No. I often ask myself, what if
I had been here during the war?
It's better you weren't here.
What kind of man would I be? A weak one?
God knows what I would be.
It's easy to preach
and be brave from the outside.
It was harder for you abroad
than for us here.
Because you only heard of it. Here.
Oh, thank you so much.
You heard of it, you saw it on TV.
It's a lot harder like that.
Yes, we were checking the news day and night.
It was really difficult.
I was five years old when the Kosovo War began.
We lived in Geneva.
My parents didn't want to discuss it with us.
But one day, I heard my parents
talk to my uncle on the phone.
And for the first time,
I saw sadness on my father's face.
Apparently, my grandmother, Dinore,
whom I had never met, had died.
Asllan, come eat. I'm coming, Mother.
I remember
that my mother was very elegant
and had beautiful features.
I can still see her sitting
with black tea
and a slice of bread.
I hardly ever saw her eat anything else.
Mom's coming! Sleep, sleep.
I'll pretend I'm Mom.
Did I catch you awake? Let me see!
He's good.
Let me see you. You're moving.
Hey, let's do the shadows.
I'll go first. Second!
Look.
I want to do the elephant!
Shall we have our meeting?
We have one day of filming at the train station.
And with...
How do you say "river?" -Lumin.
It's Diar and you.
And a lady. The lady is...
A "lady?" That's not how you say it?
A woman. A woman.
There's a woman.
She's...
How do you say "young?"
It's your mother.
Meaning Asllan's mother back then.
The woman is your mother. Okay?
You'll be walking with her at night,
only there's a river.
A big river. And you're small.
I hope I don't get scared at night.
We'll shoot this scene five or six times.
And me?
I told you, if you behave this week,
we can make it happen.
If you don't, we won't. Okay?
Deal?
Thank you. Thank you so much.
If we had to go from one village
to another, we would always walk.
It took hours.
I was with my mother and my cousin.
We were lost.
She was the heroine in my life.
Are you okay?
Yes, don't worry.
Are you okay?
When I decided to leave,
I went to see my mother.
I was a 19-year-old Physics student
and I took part in demonstrations for a free Kosovo.
After the demonstrations in 1968,
I was wanted by the police.
My mother didn't know anything,
she was really scared.
She feared for me,
but it never crossed her mind
that I would leave the country.
Then one day, she said:
"I feel like I'm going to lose you."
She was right, she did lose me.
I never saw her again. Ever.
They'll come in through the back.
You see these white tarps?
At night, we'll see huge silhouettes.
What's important is to decide
what things we can reenact
as they happened
and what we need to adjust for the scene.
Got it. You know?
Got it, I understand.
Well, I'll be there in case...
But you're going to take part in the rehearsals.
Yes, I know...
You can sit down if you want. Yes.
Whoever isn't part of the scene,
move away.
This happened around 70 years ago.
Sixty-eight years ago.
I was a kid, I was seven years old.
The idea of the Serbian politics
was to come and bother every family
wherever they could.
In Drenica, they'd come day and night,
pretending to come for our weapons.
Back then, there were no weapons.
They just came to do damage,
to exert psychological pressure
to coerce the people to leave the village.
To chase us out and empty this region.
Those who lived through the war
had it much worse than what I experienced.
But the war was a continuation
of what happened in my childhood.
Soldiers, please get in your positions.
You can knock on this wood over there.
Everyone in position!
Let's do a rehearsal!
When you see the soldiers, you hide.
Put the blanket over your head. Like this?
Don't laugh, okay? You're scared.
Should I cry?
No, no, no.
Just hide and keep quiet.
They have to be fast. Yeah.
They come in, they do what they have to do...
They would take the eldest of the family,
my father and my uncle Salih,
they took them to Skenderaj police station,
where they were severely beaten.
This story still stresses me out.
We were always afraid they would come.
We had a song that went:
"Airplane in the sky, have you seen my father?"
I was eight years old.
My father spoke to his brother
and they decided
they should go to Pristina.
Because the night raids of the Serbian
police were becoming unbearable.
Let's go, Asllan. It's okay. Go.
Look at all the traces of barbarity in these walls.
A huge state,
armed to the teeth, against...
against a single family.
When the war began, in Prekaz,
near Makrmal,
Serbian forces sieged the home of Adem Jashari.
Out of 50 people, only one child survived.
In Makrmal, there are still survivors
who can tell their stories.
The Serbs stayed here for two years.
They stayed in this house and we left.
For the mountains or the fields.
When we fled from here,
all of us together with the kids,
we went everywhere.
There's no place we didn't go.
We walked as much as we could,
there was no choice.
All of Kosovo was at war.
They told us to go to Albania
and kept the men and boys here.
Then they were killed.
They killed them and put them in the corn crib.
They killed people in the hay
and they killed people in the animal barn.
When we came back, the house was destroyed.
It was burned.
There was nothing to save.
We built houses in the same place.
But everyone built new houses.
All new.
The first year was just spent cleaning.
So many mines, grenades, and shells...
I found 17 people burned here,
whose heads I touched with my hand.
Here. But I don't want to go into detail.
They killed two of my sons.
I don't care about the houses.
But my sons were killed.
Yes.
I suffered a lot.
So it was.
I can't talk about anything else,
now that I mentioned
that they killed my sons.
They were killed, so...
The story we were told
is that my grandmother, Dinore,
disappeared on April 1st, 1999.
On that day, as the war was raging,
Dinore was expelled from Pristina
with my uncle and his family.
As she arrived at the station,
before taking the train to Macedonia,
she preferred to die rather than leave her country.
For the longest time,
I really clung to this story.
So did my father.
But today, I need to know more.
Here's the case.
Here, Valon. You can give more information.
Here's the file with the information on Dinore.
This is how ante-mortems
were filed after the war.
It says
she was last seen in Pristina.
In Pristina, yes.
The date. The information.
The date she was last seen
was April 1st, 1999.
Is that what she was wearing? Yes.
And what was it?
Wool, wool, cotton, cotton.
It's...
1915. The year.
And the eye color?
What is gray?
Gray medium.
Not so... bright.
What is this? If she had any changes on the finger.
A deformity.
Did she ever break a finger?
I don't know.
She worked all her life,
she probably got hurt.
That's possible.
Have you identified others
who were missing
from the train station in Pristina?
We're not able to answer this question at the moment.
We would have to check all the documents.
But it's possible that you have it in the archives?
Yes.
Back then, it was the Hague Tribunal
who identified them,
together with the family, in the traditional way.
Unfortunately, this case wasn't part
of those that went to the Hague Tribunal.
It's still pending analysis.
What are you thinking about?
I'm thinking...
about her last phone call.
She said
she had lived a full life
and she was just waiting to see me.
And that was that.
By the end of the 70's,
the desire to see my mother
was stronger than any border.
I left Switzerland intending to go through
the Slovenian border clandestinely.
I got caught.
They put me in prison for 18 days.
The prison warden said to me,
"Forget about your family
and go back to Switzerland.
Forget about Kosovo."
Come with me, Asllan, my son.
My poor mother...
Not a night goes by without me thinking of her.
This is where they put them on the trains for Macedonia.
To this day,
my mother's story isn't resolved.
Apparently, she stayed behind somewhere around here.
We still don't know where she ended up.
But... I talked to...
I did research to know
what actually happened.
I'd be very curious to know more about it.
What happened was,
they dragged the men out
and searched them for weapons,
then they forced everyone out of the house
and stopped people
from taking even a wheelchair.
So they had to carry her... Yeah.
...in a blanket.
They walked the whole way. And by the time they arrived,
the trains were already here,
but the Serbian militias
hadn't arrived yet.
They were Albanians telling people,
"Get on the trains
because they're coming, the militias are coming."
Part of the family left first.
And the only people who stayed
were your brother, his wife,
Diana, and your mother.
They didn't get on because it was
too crowded for your mother
and they didn't want to force her,
they wanted to wait for the next train.
So they spent the night here, in the cold.
And your mother was still alive.
The next morning, Serbian paramilitaries arrived.
They started getting violent with the people,
pushing and beating them,
taking them behind the cars, and...
And...
And Diana didn't want to leave without your mother.
They told her she couldn't bring her
because she was too old.
But Diana didn't want to leave without her
and neither did your brother.
And finally,
a Serbian police officer came and told them:
"Leave a phone number
so we can tell you where she's buried.
Leave a number with her."
And they had to leave her.
She was still alive.
So that's the real story.
Do you want to walk a little?
Why do you think your brother didn't tell you?
It was hard.
I think it was just hard.
I think it was painful for him.
Even though he tried everything,
there was nothing he could do.
He must've felt like...
he failed to do something essential.
Leaving his mother behind...
You have the profiles of all the bodies here.
The DNA profile. Yes, for all the cases here.
You have them, so if one day
the results come in...
Yes, we have them, in case...
From three to six months.
If your mother is one of the mortal remains,
after we get your DNA analysis
and if there's a match,
we'll let you know immediately.
In the back of my head, there's always...
"It's my mother, I should... Or my father."
For my father, it was different,
because I knew where he was.
I learned about my father's death
in a refugee camp in Italy.
I had no idea.
So I grieved for ten days.
I didn't come out of my room.
After ten days, I came out.
I had mourned, it was over.
Because you knew.
Yes. For my mother, I still can't do that.
It's in me, it's been in me since...
And I haven't been able to get closure,
to know where she's buried
so I can end the story.
Everyone has a story.
She didn't deserve
to die without a story.
For all of us never to know where she's resting.
That's why today was a hard day.
But let's hope we get some news soon.
Why didn't you try to find your mother's remains
these past 25 years?
It's as if I was anesthetized or frozen.
As if all my feelings had been amputated.
It was tragic to see my mother
reduced to piles of paper,
which would never serve any purpose ever.
Such is the aberration of war:
People are reduced to nothing at all.
And when you come from a poor country,
the value of a life is even lower.
Will I ever know one day how her life ended?
I hope so.
It's the image of my grandmother,
alone on this train platform, that troubles me.
I'm haunted by the fear
she must've felt.
And I think it's the same fear
I felt in my father.
I wish he were no longer alone
with this pain.
So we could share
my grandmother's memory together.
Asllan? What are you doing here?
Come inside.
Fahrije, come get the boy.
Asllan, my boy.
Were you cold? Are you freezing? A little.
I'll help you out, sweetheart.
Just put your feet near the fire.
There you go.
Put them here and get warm.
When I entered the oda,
the solid stone walls and massive beams...
To me, the oda was the safest place in the world.
Get in front of them!
My father left our family when I was 15.
His marriage with my mother was over.
I was hurt to see my mother suffering
and trying to hide it from us.
So I decided
to stop speaking to my father.
I was too angry to accept his departure.
One of my biggest regrets
is that I didn't reach out to him before he died.
Does Ares look like him? Oh, yes.
Because my father was the tallest man in the village.
We need to always see all of Ares.
We shouldn't just see the watch and his hands.
But Dad, we'll edit the scene.
We have shots of him looking down
and of his hands.
But whole, so we see his head
when he opens the watch.
Ares is doing great acting.
We should see him in full.
And when Ares lies down,
he's not dead yet,
he needs to move his head a little.
You know? Before he...
You mean when he's lying down? Yes.
It's fine that he's lying straight, but...
You can show him what to do.
He should move his face
from side to side.
And move his hand.
You know? It's hard to die.
I was not very happy in exile.
I hid behind loads of work,
hours and hours in the research lab.
Because every time I thought of my country, of Makrmal,
of Pristina,
I felt guilty for leaving everyone behind.
I had this grief, this terrible nostalgia.
Catch it!
Oh, yes!
Outside!
You're never going to get it! You fouled me!
Free kick.
Give me the ball. Can you tie it?
Can you tie it up for me?
Can you tie it?
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight...
Where's Asllan?
She's not crying.
Shoo, go away.
Isa, I saw your bride.
What?
I saw her, she's not crying.
I saw her smiling.
I don't care. What does she look like?
She's pretty.
Off you go, I've got to get married.
At my brother's wedding,
all of our relatives, friends,
and nearby villages,
that was the last time we were all together.
DINORE'S REMAINS ARE YET TO BE FOUND.
NO DNA MATCH HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED YET.
IN MEMORY OF DINORE GJINOVCI
AND ALL THE VICTIMS OF THE KOSOVO WAR
AND YUGOSLAV WARS
THE BEAUTY OF THE DONKEY
All the stone houses have disappeared.
The war carried them away.
What remains with me is my past,
my memories of what Makrmal used to be.
Here, I'm standing at the corner.
The house was about 14 meters wide,
if I remember correctly, and it was 30 meters long.
It was a big, two-story house.
The house was magnificent and very large.
I don't even see any remains.
Usually, there are traces of old walls.
The hills, the fields...
Our legs were strong,
we had a zest for life,
for laughter, for playing together.
Everything was so present and intense.
All of us were vivacious.
I'll hold this and you grab another one.
Now grab another one.
Don't let go.
I was very fond of my cousins, as they were of me.
You've brought me back to a village
that only exists in my memories.
My father left his country over 60 years ago.
But he carried the images of his past with him.
As I grew up in Switzerland,
his stories
became my only connection to Kosovo
and the village of Makrmal.
They fed my imagination
and my desire to become a storyteller.
In my mind, I imagined a village
tucked between green hills...
like a wonderful refuge.
Are you able to imagine
how this will look in the film?
Yes, very much so. It's going to be amazing.
You'll have to visualize
and guide me through the staging,
tell me where you think people should be.
Yeah. We have to imagine this space
a little like a theater, you know?
Yeah, that'll be great.
I prefer this to having an oda that isn't...
Exactly. real, you know?
It's the beginning.
A great beginning. Absolutely fabulous.
Okay? Yeah.
And on the other side...
The other side, let's paint it white.
The small one or a big side?
One of the big sides.
So plaster on one side and... Yes, with...
Plaster everywhere, except... An old plank.
We don't have enough old planks,
so we could do what they did,
but we don't have a blow torch.
We can age them. That's right, patina.
We can age the new wood with patina
and put the old planks on top. Yes.
All good? All good? We can go back to work?
We're making a very scary monster.
See you later. See you later.
Do you have time to play a role in the film?
Halim. Is that his name?
Hi. Do you have a minute?
We have a shoot this weekend. Oh, yeah?
On Saturday and Sunday. Yes.
Plus another day the following week.
Later? Later.
And we need you for a role.
Yes. Yes?
It's the role of Cena.
Of Uncle Cena.
Oh, my father. Sure. Yes.
Yes. Yes?
I'm here. You tell me whatever you need.
So on Saturday and Sunday.
I'm here at home. I don't go anywhere.
On Sunday, it's really early in the morning.
I wake up at 4 a.m.
Really? I have a coffee with my wife at 4 a.m.
Could you come together with your bride?
To the shoot?
Yes. With my old wife, not my bride.
She's not a bride anymore.
Look. She's an old woman.
Come, Salla, they want to take you to Hollywood.
My name is Leart Gjinovci. I'm 11 years old.
I come from the village of Makrmal.
I play the role of...
Uncle Asllan that...
I messed up.
I messed up the whole thing.
I messed up. It's okay.
Do you want us not to look at you?
It's okay.
My name is Leart Gjinovci. I'm 11 years old.
I come from the village of Makrmal.
I play the role of Asllan Gjinovci
in the film "The Beauty of the Donkey".
One more for the sound.
That was really good.
We'll do another one for the sound, okay?
You got it now. You know it.
It was great. Do exactly the same.
I was nervous.
This is our land.
It's as big as I remember it.
I'll reach some big ones.
I don't want you to fall.
I'm used to climbing my own trees.
I break all the branches.
Throw it.
You caught it? Yes.
You like it?
What a pear.
Do you want to eat corn? Yeah!
Who brought the corn?
You!
I did!
It takes seven to eight days to go there. Where?
To the stars.
They're so far away.
What happened to the house and the village
during the war?
Was my house destroyed before the war?
They destroyed it before the war.
You didn't experience the war here. No.
No. I often ask myself, what if
I had been here during the war?
It's better you weren't here.
What kind of man would I be? A weak one?
God knows what I would be.
It's easy to preach
and be brave from the outside.
It was harder for you abroad
than for us here.
Because you only heard of it. Here.
Oh, thank you so much.
You heard of it, you saw it on TV.
It's a lot harder like that.
Yes, we were checking the news day and night.
It was really difficult.
I was five years old when the Kosovo War began.
We lived in Geneva.
My parents didn't want to discuss it with us.
But one day, I heard my parents
talk to my uncle on the phone.
And for the first time,
I saw sadness on my father's face.
Apparently, my grandmother, Dinore,
whom I had never met, had died.
Asllan, come eat. I'm coming, Mother.
I remember
that my mother was very elegant
and had beautiful features.
I can still see her sitting
with black tea
and a slice of bread.
I hardly ever saw her eat anything else.
Mom's coming! Sleep, sleep.
I'll pretend I'm Mom.
Did I catch you awake? Let me see!
He's good.
Let me see you. You're moving.
Hey, let's do the shadows.
I'll go first. Second!
Look.
I want to do the elephant!
Shall we have our meeting?
We have one day of filming at the train station.
And with...
How do you say "river?" -Lumin.
It's Diar and you.
And a lady. The lady is...
A "lady?" That's not how you say it?
A woman. A woman.
There's a woman.
She's...
How do you say "young?"
It's your mother.
Meaning Asllan's mother back then.
The woman is your mother. Okay?
You'll be walking with her at night,
only there's a river.
A big river. And you're small.
I hope I don't get scared at night.
We'll shoot this scene five or six times.
And me?
I told you, if you behave this week,
we can make it happen.
If you don't, we won't. Okay?
Deal?
Thank you. Thank you so much.
If we had to go from one village
to another, we would always walk.
It took hours.
I was with my mother and my cousin.
We were lost.
She was the heroine in my life.
Are you okay?
Yes, don't worry.
Are you okay?
When I decided to leave,
I went to see my mother.
I was a 19-year-old Physics student
and I took part in demonstrations for a free Kosovo.
After the demonstrations in 1968,
I was wanted by the police.
My mother didn't know anything,
she was really scared.
She feared for me,
but it never crossed her mind
that I would leave the country.
Then one day, she said:
"I feel like I'm going to lose you."
She was right, she did lose me.
I never saw her again. Ever.
They'll come in through the back.
You see these white tarps?
At night, we'll see huge silhouettes.
What's important is to decide
what things we can reenact
as they happened
and what we need to adjust for the scene.
Got it. You know?
Got it, I understand.
Well, I'll be there in case...
But you're going to take part in the rehearsals.
Yes, I know...
You can sit down if you want. Yes.
Whoever isn't part of the scene,
move away.
This happened around 70 years ago.
Sixty-eight years ago.
I was a kid, I was seven years old.
The idea of the Serbian politics
was to come and bother every family
wherever they could.
In Drenica, they'd come day and night,
pretending to come for our weapons.
Back then, there were no weapons.
They just came to do damage,
to exert psychological pressure
to coerce the people to leave the village.
To chase us out and empty this region.
Those who lived through the war
had it much worse than what I experienced.
But the war was a continuation
of what happened in my childhood.
Soldiers, please get in your positions.
You can knock on this wood over there.
Everyone in position!
Let's do a rehearsal!
When you see the soldiers, you hide.
Put the blanket over your head. Like this?
Don't laugh, okay? You're scared.
Should I cry?
No, no, no.
Just hide and keep quiet.
They have to be fast. Yeah.
They come in, they do what they have to do...
They would take the eldest of the family,
my father and my uncle Salih,
they took them to Skenderaj police station,
where they were severely beaten.
This story still stresses me out.
We were always afraid they would come.
We had a song that went:
"Airplane in the sky, have you seen my father?"
I was eight years old.
My father spoke to his brother
and they decided
they should go to Pristina.
Because the night raids of the Serbian
police were becoming unbearable.
Let's go, Asllan. It's okay. Go.
Look at all the traces of barbarity in these walls.
A huge state,
armed to the teeth, against...
against a single family.
When the war began, in Prekaz,
near Makrmal,
Serbian forces sieged the home of Adem Jashari.
Out of 50 people, only one child survived.
In Makrmal, there are still survivors
who can tell their stories.
The Serbs stayed here for two years.
They stayed in this house and we left.
For the mountains or the fields.
When we fled from here,
all of us together with the kids,
we went everywhere.
There's no place we didn't go.
We walked as much as we could,
there was no choice.
All of Kosovo was at war.
They told us to go to Albania
and kept the men and boys here.
Then they were killed.
They killed them and put them in the corn crib.
They killed people in the hay
and they killed people in the animal barn.
When we came back, the house was destroyed.
It was burned.
There was nothing to save.
We built houses in the same place.
But everyone built new houses.
All new.
The first year was just spent cleaning.
So many mines, grenades, and shells...
I found 17 people burned here,
whose heads I touched with my hand.
Here. But I don't want to go into detail.
They killed two of my sons.
I don't care about the houses.
But my sons were killed.
Yes.
I suffered a lot.
So it was.
I can't talk about anything else,
now that I mentioned
that they killed my sons.
They were killed, so...
The story we were told
is that my grandmother, Dinore,
disappeared on April 1st, 1999.
On that day, as the war was raging,
Dinore was expelled from Pristina
with my uncle and his family.
As she arrived at the station,
before taking the train to Macedonia,
she preferred to die rather than leave her country.
For the longest time,
I really clung to this story.
So did my father.
But today, I need to know more.
Here's the case.
Here, Valon. You can give more information.
Here's the file with the information on Dinore.
This is how ante-mortems
were filed after the war.
It says
she was last seen in Pristina.
In Pristina, yes.
The date. The information.
The date she was last seen
was April 1st, 1999.
Is that what she was wearing? Yes.
And what was it?
Wool, wool, cotton, cotton.
It's...
1915. The year.
And the eye color?
What is gray?
Gray medium.
Not so... bright.
What is this? If she had any changes on the finger.
A deformity.
Did she ever break a finger?
I don't know.
She worked all her life,
she probably got hurt.
That's possible.
Have you identified others
who were missing
from the train station in Pristina?
We're not able to answer this question at the moment.
We would have to check all the documents.
But it's possible that you have it in the archives?
Yes.
Back then, it was the Hague Tribunal
who identified them,
together with the family, in the traditional way.
Unfortunately, this case wasn't part
of those that went to the Hague Tribunal.
It's still pending analysis.
What are you thinking about?
I'm thinking...
about her last phone call.
She said
she had lived a full life
and she was just waiting to see me.
And that was that.
By the end of the 70's,
the desire to see my mother
was stronger than any border.
I left Switzerland intending to go through
the Slovenian border clandestinely.
I got caught.
They put me in prison for 18 days.
The prison warden said to me,
"Forget about your family
and go back to Switzerland.
Forget about Kosovo."
Come with me, Asllan, my son.
My poor mother...
Not a night goes by without me thinking of her.
This is where they put them on the trains for Macedonia.
To this day,
my mother's story isn't resolved.
Apparently, she stayed behind somewhere around here.
We still don't know where she ended up.
But... I talked to...
I did research to know
what actually happened.
I'd be very curious to know more about it.
What happened was,
they dragged the men out
and searched them for weapons,
then they forced everyone out of the house
and stopped people
from taking even a wheelchair.
So they had to carry her... Yeah.
...in a blanket.
They walked the whole way. And by the time they arrived,
the trains were already here,
but the Serbian militias
hadn't arrived yet.
They were Albanians telling people,
"Get on the trains
because they're coming, the militias are coming."
Part of the family left first.
And the only people who stayed
were your brother, his wife,
Diana, and your mother.
They didn't get on because it was
too crowded for your mother
and they didn't want to force her,
they wanted to wait for the next train.
So they spent the night here, in the cold.
And your mother was still alive.
The next morning, Serbian paramilitaries arrived.
They started getting violent with the people,
pushing and beating them,
taking them behind the cars, and...
And...
And Diana didn't want to leave without your mother.
They told her she couldn't bring her
because she was too old.
But Diana didn't want to leave without her
and neither did your brother.
And finally,
a Serbian police officer came and told them:
"Leave a phone number
so we can tell you where she's buried.
Leave a number with her."
And they had to leave her.
She was still alive.
So that's the real story.
Do you want to walk a little?
Why do you think your brother didn't tell you?
It was hard.
I think it was just hard.
I think it was painful for him.
Even though he tried everything,
there was nothing he could do.
He must've felt like...
he failed to do something essential.
Leaving his mother behind...
You have the profiles of all the bodies here.
The DNA profile. Yes, for all the cases here.
You have them, so if one day
the results come in...
Yes, we have them, in case...
From three to six months.
If your mother is one of the mortal remains,
after we get your DNA analysis
and if there's a match,
we'll let you know immediately.
In the back of my head, there's always...
"It's my mother, I should... Or my father."
For my father, it was different,
because I knew where he was.
I learned about my father's death
in a refugee camp in Italy.
I had no idea.
So I grieved for ten days.
I didn't come out of my room.
After ten days, I came out.
I had mourned, it was over.
Because you knew.
Yes. For my mother, I still can't do that.
It's in me, it's been in me since...
And I haven't been able to get closure,
to know where she's buried
so I can end the story.
Everyone has a story.
She didn't deserve
to die without a story.
For all of us never to know where she's resting.
That's why today was a hard day.
But let's hope we get some news soon.
Why didn't you try to find your mother's remains
these past 25 years?
It's as if I was anesthetized or frozen.
As if all my feelings had been amputated.
It was tragic to see my mother
reduced to piles of paper,
which would never serve any purpose ever.
Such is the aberration of war:
People are reduced to nothing at all.
And when you come from a poor country,
the value of a life is even lower.
Will I ever know one day how her life ended?
I hope so.
It's the image of my grandmother,
alone on this train platform, that troubles me.
I'm haunted by the fear
she must've felt.
And I think it's the same fear
I felt in my father.
I wish he were no longer alone
with this pain.
So we could share
my grandmother's memory together.
Asllan? What are you doing here?
Come inside.
Fahrije, come get the boy.
Asllan, my boy.
Were you cold? Are you freezing? A little.
I'll help you out, sweetheart.
Just put your feet near the fire.
There you go.
Put them here and get warm.
When I entered the oda,
the solid stone walls and massive beams...
To me, the oda was the safest place in the world.
Get in front of them!
My father left our family when I was 15.
His marriage with my mother was over.
I was hurt to see my mother suffering
and trying to hide it from us.
So I decided
to stop speaking to my father.
I was too angry to accept his departure.
One of my biggest regrets
is that I didn't reach out to him before he died.
Does Ares look like him? Oh, yes.
Because my father was the tallest man in the village.
We need to always see all of Ares.
We shouldn't just see the watch and his hands.
But Dad, we'll edit the scene.
We have shots of him looking down
and of his hands.
But whole, so we see his head
when he opens the watch.
Ares is doing great acting.
We should see him in full.
And when Ares lies down,
he's not dead yet,
he needs to move his head a little.
You know? Before he...
You mean when he's lying down? Yes.
It's fine that he's lying straight, but...
You can show him what to do.
He should move his face
from side to side.
And move his hand.
You know? It's hard to die.
I was not very happy in exile.
I hid behind loads of work,
hours and hours in the research lab.
Because every time I thought of my country, of Makrmal,
of Pristina,
I felt guilty for leaving everyone behind.
I had this grief, this terrible nostalgia.
Catch it!
Oh, yes!
Outside!
You're never going to get it! You fouled me!
Free kick.
Give me the ball. Can you tie it?
Can you tie it up for me?
Can you tie it?
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight...
Where's Asllan?
She's not crying.
Shoo, go away.
Isa, I saw your bride.
What?
I saw her, she's not crying.
I saw her smiling.
I don't care. What does she look like?
She's pretty.
Off you go, I've got to get married.
At my brother's wedding,
all of our relatives, friends,
and nearby villages,
that was the last time we were all together.
DINORE'S REMAINS ARE YET TO BE FOUND.
NO DNA MATCH HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED YET.
IN MEMORY OF DINORE GJINOVCI
AND ALL THE VICTIMS OF THE KOSOVO WAR
AND YUGOSLAV WARS