SHAME AND MONEY: A Film about Capitalism, Money, and Pride

The director and crew of the film Shame and Money held a press conference at the National Theater this morning. The film makes its regional premiere tonight, opening the Competition Programme – Narrative Feature Film at the 32nd Sarajevo Film Festival. The latest work by Kosovar-German director Visar Morina follows a rural family moving to Pristina to explore class divides, capitalism, money, and pride in Kosovo.

For Morina, Sarajevo holds a special place, as he noted during the press conference. He first visited the Bosnian capital in 2011 as part of CineLink, while his film Exile was presented at the Festival in 2022, when the event was held entirely online due to the pandemic. Although he was unable to travel from Germany, where restrictions were particularly strict at the time, Morina received the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo for the film.

“Sarajevo always feels like home to me. It reminds me very much of Kosovo,” Morina said, recalling his previous visits to the Festival.

The similarities among Exile, Shame, and Money extend beyond the themes Morina explores. Both films feature characters named Hatixhe and Shaban, played by the same actors. Asked whether this was an intentional attempt to create a kind of shared universe, Morina said it was an unusual combination of coincidence and personal associations.

“To be honest, I struggle with names! Hatixhe comes from a song that I love, while Shaban got his name from a story that Astrid, the actor who plays Shaban, once told me,” Morina explained. He added that the image of the two actors together in a small scene stayed with him because it reminded him of his parents.

The domestic space and family relationships are at the heart of Morina’s new film. From the opening scene, in which the family sits around the dinner table, the film establishes its tone and sets the stage for the conflicts that will unfold. Morina explained that at its core, the film is about our relationship to the Other and the impossibility of ever fully escaping our own perspective.

“We can only assume how the other person feels, but we can never truly know,” the director said.

The process of bringing the film to life, however, proved considerably more complicated than Morina had initially anticipated.

“It was awful! I wanted to shoot the film quickly and on a small budget, in the village where I grew up and in the house where I grew up. Instead, the production took approximately five years.”

The limited budget of the Kosovo Cinematography Center led to an extensive international co-production, with six countries involved in the making.

The cast also played a particularly important role in the film’s development. “The casting process is different every time, and the relationship I have with Astrid was one of the reasons I decided to make this film in the first place. However, finding an actress to play the Mother was one of the biggest challenges for me.”

At the centre of the film are Hatixhe and Alban. Hatixhe, as actress Flonja Kodheli explained, draws her strength from her quietness. “After losing her job and her home, she has to take care of three daughters, which forces her to make numerous sacrifices and constantly look ahead.”

Opposite her quiet resilience stands Alban, a character whom Morina and actor Alban Ukaj describe as a “newly rich” man. Speaking about the character, the director recalled an article he had read years ago about the relationship between a country’s income and makeup sales. “The idea was that when people have the least, they feel the need to show others that they are not poor.”

The question of money is also embodied in some of the film’s most striking motifs, including a statue of Bill Clinton and a 100-dollar bill bearing his image. Morina also spoke about the historical context behind their appearance, reflecting on Kosovo’s relationship with NATO following the war.

“The Milošević era was a very difficult period. People were constantly afraid that war would break out. And when it did, people were incredibly grateful to NATO,” Morina said, noting that there are recordings of families and children offering gifts to the soldiers. For him, the statue of Clinton is simultaneously a symbol of history and the beginning of a new era.

For Morina, the question of money is connected to shame but also to how societies and individuals attempt to conceal their economic insecurity. “If we regard money as ‘everything’, it is very easy to become depressed. I think shame is part of it, too,” he said.

The conversation also turned to the way the Balkans are currently represented in popular culture - as a space of distinctive aesthetics, poverty and exoticisation. Morina believes that the boundary between depicting reality and exploiting it lies precisely in the experience from which the story emerges.

He recalled once sharing an office with a screenwriter who was writing a story about a woman going broke. In the script, there was a line that read: “If things continue like this, I will have to start using my savings.” The problem, Morina noted, was that the screenwriter was one of the highest-paid screenwriters at the time.

“You can really tell when someone is making up a story and when they have actually lived it,” the director concluded.