Alive! (2009)
★★½ — Alive! (2009)
Artan Minarolli's Alive! is a co-production between Albania, France, and Austria, released in 2009 at a time when Albanian cinema was only beginning to attract modest international attention after decades of near-total isolation under communist rule. Minarolli, who had worked primarily in Albanian television before this feature, draws on the very real cultural practice of the Kanun, a centuries-old code of customary law that still governs blood feud obligations in parts of rural Albania and Kosovo. The film was produced with support from Agat Films & Cie, a French company with a track record of backing smaller European art features. Lead actor Nik Xhelilaj, relatively unknown at the time, would later build a career in German-language television. The 90-minute runtime keeps things lean for what is, in subject matter at least, a modest but genuinely specific regional story.
A-Z a movie from each country. #2 Albania 2nd film on way through 1 film from each country. Albania. I gotta say, this one had a weird ending. The poster alludes to it quite well but 99% of this film is about an old blood feud between families (which I assume is some sort of tribal thing called a Kunan they mention a couple times) After the death of his Father, the main character Koli has kind of inherited his Father's blood feud. That in itself is the premise of a decent movie, albeit one where the pace is really slow and there are plenty of random threads that appear that go nowhere... The end 1% is completely disjointed from the rest of the film. I found out later it's based on true events but even so... it feels kind of completely random to add that in. I would have probably given this a 3* were it not for the random end. It did detract from the film itself. The positives here are definitely some of the scenery, and the glimpse into life in rural Albania. Those parts were both beautiful, endearing and touching. Can't say I'd recommend this one to friends but it certainly wasn't a bad movie.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2009 | Watched: 2025-05-20
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