Tirana viti zero / Tirana Year Zero

A story of love in the chaotic aftermath of the turmoils of 1997. Niku is 23, and lives with his ailing father and unemployed mother in a drab concrete housing estate in Tirana. He gets by with occasional jobs as a lorry driver. Unlike his girlfriend Klara, the young man does not want to leave Albania – he is the family breadwinner, and also has some previous experience of life as an immigrant in Italy: “You work and then you sleep.” A portrait of the Year Zero in which Albanians faced the decision whether to go or to stay, the film attracted international notice, and also addresses another question: what to do with the relics of the Communist past.