Kaltrina Krasniqi – Vera dreams of the sea

On the occasion of her publication of Speak Radio (Scriptings/Archive Books/EEclectics, May 2024), Anna Bromley, artist, author and artistic-research associate at the KHM, welcomes an essential voice from her book to Cologne: Kosovan filmmaker Kaltrina Krasniqi, with her stunningly sinister debut film!

After the movie, Bromley and Krasniqi will talk about the film and the book, as well as their feminist alliances.

VERA ANDRRON DETIN / VERA DREAMS OF THE SEA

ALB, KOS, MKD 2021 / 87 min / OV + eng SUB

Language/: Albanian

Director: Kaltrina Krasniqi

Trailer

Vera’s (64) serene everyday life is disrupted by her husband's unexpected suicide followed by an unwelcome, menacing parade of relatives who claim to have ownership over their village family house. When the tendrils of an underworld scheme begin to surface, Vera’s world will face danger and seem ready to collapse. Fear and mistrust will force Vera to take the family’s fate into her own hands. Steeped into an ominous atmosphere, Vera Dreams of the Sea is an intimate yet universal portrait of a woman, who has to face the raw reality of going against the deeply-seated gender issues that still engross our times.

Screenplay: Doruntina Basha

Cinematographer: Sevdije Kastrati

Editor: Vladimir Pavlovski, Kaltrina Krasniqi

Music: Petrit Çeku, Genc Salihu

Sound: Darko Spasovski, Igor Popovski

Cast: Teuta Jegeni Ajdini, Alketa Sylaj, Astrit Kabashi, Refet Abazi, Arona Zyberi

Producer: Shkumbin Istrefi

Co-Producer: Ognen Antov, Klajdi Papadhimitri, Kaltrina Krasniqi

Production Company: Isstra Creative Factory, Vera Films

Co-Production Company: Dream Factory, Papadhimitri Production

World Sales: Heretic Outreach

Kaltrina Krasniqi (*1981) is an award winning Kosovo based film director and researcher working in film and digital humanities since the early 2000s. She is a founding member of the Kosovo Oral History Initiative - a digital archive where personal histories of individuals from various paths of life are recorded and published; a co-founder of Dit’ e Nat’ - a non formal setting for promotion of film, literature and music; and a founder of Vera Films, a film producction company focused in young voices of cinema. She graduated in Film Directing in the University of Prishtina in 2004 and in 2011 completed her MA in Kosovo’s Institute for Journalism and Communication. In 2015 she continued her professional development in the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).