I Believe the Portrait Saved Me

Synopsis

Twenty-five years after his abduction during the Kosovo War, painter Skender Muja recounts a story of extraordinary survival. In the tumultuous final months of the war, Muja and numerous Albanian citizens from Mitrovica were captured while fleeing Kosovo. Detained in a repurposed school-turned-detention center, they faced fear, confinement, and an uncertain fate. Narrated by Muja, the film blends his reflections on the transformative power of art with reenactments of his experience.

Directors' Biography

Alban Muja is a Kosovan artist and filmmaker based in Berlin and Prishtina. Influenced primarily by the social, political, and economic transformation processes in the wider surrounding region, he investigates history and socio-political themes, linking them to his position in Kosova today.