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Blerta Basholli: Even in the Middle of a War, We Still Tried to Be Ordinary Teenagers

In DUA, director Blerta Basholli tells an intimate coming-of-age story inspired by her own memories of growing up in Kosovo during the 90s, proving that even in the darkest of times people still search for hope, friendship, and joy. A film will be screened at Competition Programme – Narrative Feature Film.

 After the international success of her debut feature Hive, Kosovar writer and director returns to Sarajevo with Dua, a deeply personal second feature. Reflecting on her own experience of growing up in Kosovo during the 1990s, Basholli tells a story of Dua, a teenage girl who’s trying to navigate adolescence, friendships, first love, and everyday conflicts, all while the war slowly, but surely reshapes the world around her. Rather than focusing solely on the political aspect of that time, Dua explores the emotional impact of the war through the perspective of a teenage girl, thus capturing how young people continue to dream, connect, and search for their place in the world even when that world is full of danger and uncertinty.

Your debut feature, Hive, achieved extraordinary international success, winning the Grand Jury Prize, the Directing Award, and the Audience Award in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival. After such a remarkable debut, did you feel any pressure while making Dua, your sophomore feature?

Of course there was pressure. At the beginning I thought I don’t feel any pressure, bur I did. Hive changed my life in many ways, and I knew that expectations would inevitably be different but I also realized quite early that if I started making decisions based on expectations, I would lose the reason I wanted to make films in the first place.

With Dua, I tried to return to what initially drew me to storytelling: honesty. I wasn't interested in making something bigger or more ambitious simply because it was my second feature. I wanted to tell a story that felt deeply personal and emotionally truthful. Once I focused on that, the pressure became less important. You can't control how a film will be received – you can only be sincere about why you're making it.

In Dua, war, aggression, and hatred are seen through the perspective of a teenage girl. Adolescence is often seen as a stage of life that feels like a grey zone between childhood and adulthood, a transitional stage where you begin to understand the world more deeply, but are not always equipped to respond to it. What drew you to exploring that in-between point of view?

I've always been amazed by how, even in the middle of a war, we still tried to be ordinary teenagers. We listened to music, dreamed about the future, fell in love, worried about fitting in. Life doesn't simply stop because conflict begins. There is this incredible instinct to hold on to normality, even when everything around you is changing. That contrast has stayed with me ever since, and I wanted to capture it in the film.

I remember asking a friend years later, "Why did we keep going out during the war? How could we listen to music, dance, especially mosh to hard rock, as if nothing was happening?" He told me that it was a way of releasing everything we were carrying inside – a way of getting the fear and anger out through that aggressive dancing, while, for a brief moment, pretending that life was still normal. That conversation stayed with me because I think it says something very true about human nature. Even in the darkest moments, we search for small pockets of joy, freedom, and connection.

I wanted the audience to experience war the way many teenagers do – not through military strategies or political speeches, but through the gradual disappearance of ordinary life. One day you're thinking about your first kiss, and the next you're wondering whether your family will have to leave home. That collision between adolescence and war felt both heartbreaking and deeply human.

Although Dua is rooted in my own memories of growing up in Kosovo during the 1990s, I also made the film with today's world in mind. Sadly, there are still so many young people growing up in the shadow of conflict. My hope is that they can recognize themselves in Dua – not because their circumstances are identical, but because the longing for normality, for friendship, for love, and for hope is universal. In that sense, I hope the film can speak not only about one place and one moment in history, but to anyone whose adolescence has been interrupted by war.

How much did your own upbringing in Kosovo during the 90s impact the story and characters in Dua?

It shaped almost everything, it’s based on my life.  It comes from memories that have stayed with me for decades.

I grew up in Prishtina during the 1990s, when our daily lives were slowly becoming more restricted. Schools changed, public spaces disappeared, adults lived with constant uncertainty, and yet somehow life continued.

Many of the small moments in Dua come directly from those memories and experiences rather than from historical events. I was interested in preserving the emotional texture of that period rather than reconstructing history. Memory is never only about what happened – it's about how it felt.

Pinea Matoshi, who plays Dua, is amazing and her performance feels deeply organic. How much did you let her shape Dua's character? What were the most important conversations you and she had before filming began?

Pinea contributed enormously to the character. From the moment I met her, I felt she had an honesty that couldn't be taught. She wasn't trying to perform emotions; she simply experienced them very naturally. She's incredibly intuitive, and that became one of the greatest strengths of her performance.

Before shooting, we spent a lot of time talking – not only about the script, but about being thirteen, about insecurities, friendships, first love, and the feeling of not quite knowing where you belong. We also talked about the historical context, but I never wanted her to carry the responsibility of representing history. I wanted her to remain a girl living through it.

Because she's so intuitive, my job was often less about telling her how to act and more about creating a believable situation for her to respond to. I would explain what it felt like to be in that moment, what Dua was experiencing emotionally, and then trust Pinea to find her own way through it. She often surprised me with choices that felt completely authentic.

During filming, I encouraged her to trust those instincts. Sometimes the smallest hesitation, silence, or glance communicated much more than dialogue ever could. Those moments often came from her own sensitivity, and I think that's what makes her performance feel so truthful.

Aside from Matoshi, the film also features many talented teenage non-professional actors. What is most challenging when directing young actors, especially when it comes to heavy subjects they haven't necessarily experienced, such as war?

The greatest challenge isn't explaining war it's protecting their spontaneity. Young actors have an honesty that professionals sometimes spend years trying to recover. I didn't want them to become overly conscious of acting, which sometimes was happening.

Rather than asking them to imagine violence or trauma, we focused on relationships, friendships, secrets, excitement, jealousy, fear of exclusion things they understand instinctively and from their own experiences. The historical circumstances became the environment surrounding those emotions.

We also created a space where they felt safe to ask questions and improvise. Trust is essential. If young actors feel protected, they often give performances that are remarkably truthful.

This is your third collaboration with actress Yllka Gashi. How did your creative relationship evolve over the years?

First of all, I simply love working with Yllka. She's an incredibly talented actress, but she's also someone who is wonderful to collaborate with. She's smart, deeply thoughtful, has a beautiful heart, and over the years she's become a great friend. At the same time, once we're on set, she's completely professional. She always puts the film first, and that balance of friendship and professionalism is something I really value.

Working with Yllka has become a real creative dialogue. We know each other well enough now that we can challenge one another while sharing complete trust. What I admire most about her is that she never approaches a role with preconceived ideas. She remains curious and open throughout the entire process, and that curiosity keeps our collaborations fresh.

This time, she even rewrote two of her most important scenes with Dua. Her suggestions made those scenes stronger and more truthful, and I immediately felt they made more emotional sense. I never see collaboration as giving up authorship. Quite the opposite when you work with people you trust, the film becomes richer because everyone is working toward the same goal.

Every project asks something different from both of us, so I never feel like we're repeating ourselves. Instead, it feels like we're continuing a creative conversation that evolves with every film, and I feel very lucky that we've been able to grow together in that way.

As a filmmaker from Kosovo whose work has reached major international festivals, have you noticed a shift in the way international audiences approach films from the region?

I think there has been a positive shift. There is growing curiosity about stories from Kosova and the wider region, but more importantly, audiences are increasingly willing to engage with them as cinema rather than simply as political testimony.

Of course, our history remains important and inevitably shapes many stories we tell. But I hope people also recognize that our films speak about universal experiences love, family, identity, grief, growing up. The more diverse stories emerge from Kosovo, the less audiences define us solely through conflict.

That, for me, is an encouraging development.

From your earliest short films to your first feature and now your second, Sarajevo Film Festival has been a recurring platform for your work. What emotional or artistic meaning does Sarajevo carry for you?

Sarajevo has always felt like more than a festival to me. It feels like a place where filmmakers from the region genuinely understand one another, because our histories often overlap even when our stories are different.

It was one of the first places where I felt my voice as a filmmaker was welcomed and encouraged. I was in Sarajevo in 2006 with a short documentary, and as a young filmmaker I felt like home, it was an amazing experience. I came back to Sarajevo with Hive, in 2021, but was not able to attend, now after 20 years I am more than excited to attend the festival as the first time felt like a community rather than simply attending another festival.

There's also something symbolic about presenting films in Sarajevo a city whose own history carries both deep trauma and extraordinary resilience. Those themes resonate strongly with Dua, so bringing the film there feels especially meaningful.