Zana (2019)
Kosovo's cinema has been finding its feet with remarkable speed since the country's declaration of independence in 2008, and a recurring preoccupation in its films is the long shadow cast by the 1998 to 1999 war. The conflict left wounds that did not close neatly when the shooting stopped, particularly for women who endured sexual violence as a deliberate instrument of ethnic cleansing. That legacy rarely gets the sustained, human-scale attention it deserves, and it is into that space that Zana quietly steps. The film sits alongside other recent productions from the Western Balkans that are more interested in what trauma does to ordinary people over years and decades than in dramatising the events themselves. If you have seen Hive (2021), Blerta Basholli's film about a woman rebuilding her life after her husband's disappearance during that same conflict, you will already have a sense of the territory, though Kastrati's approach carries a different, more inward-facing charge.
Zana is the debut feature from Antoneta Kastrati, a Kosovo-born filmmaker who had previously worked in short film and developed the project over several years, drawing on autobiographical material alongside broader research into how grief and reproductive pressure intersect in post-war Kosovar society. The production is a genuinely international affair, co-produced across Albania, Georgia, Kosovo and the United States through a combination of smaller outfits including Crossing Bridges Films, Alief and On Film Production. Budgets in this world are modest almost by definition, and the film wears that modesty sensibly, relying on location, performance and atmosphere rather than production gloss. It screened at a number of festivals on the international circuit and was selected as Kosovo's submission to the Academy Awards in the international feature category, which gave it a degree of visibility it might not otherwise have found. The screenplay, which Kastrati co-wrote, incorporates elements of folk belief and mystical healing practices that sit uneasily alongside the film's grounded realism, and it is that friction between the rational and the superstitious that gives the film some of its more unsettling qualities. Genre labels like "horror" and "thriller" are technically attached, but they should be read loosely.
The cast is drawn largely from the Albanian-speaking theatrical world. Adriana Matoshi, who plays the central figure of Lume, is a well-regarded stage and screen presence in Kosovo and Albania, and this role is in many ways a showcase for a register that mainstream European cinema rarely asks of its actors: prolonged, internalised suffering that must remain legible without becoming performative. Alongside her, Astrit Kabashi plays her husband, a man caught between his own grief and the social pressures bearing down on the household. Çun Lajçi and Bislim Muçaj fill out the family circle, while Mensur Safqiu takes a supporting role that connects the domestic drama to broader community expectations. It is, in all the meaningful ways, an ensemble built around a single gravitational centre.
Judging by the rather ominous cover art, I fully expected to be settling in for a straight-up horror film. Instead, Antoneta Kastrati’s 2019 picture Zana pulled the rug out from under me, revealing itself to be a slow-burn psychological character study of a much heavier variety. The film follows a woman grappling with the tragic loss of her child during the Kosovan war, and it immediately sets a tone of profound, lingering grief rather than relying on cheap cinematic scares.
What makes the picture so compelling is how it handles its incredibly challenging subject matter. Rather than leaning into overt melodrama, Kastrati focuses on the suffocating, everyday reality of Zana’s life. The real tension here isn't supernatural; it’s the intense, relentless pressure from her own family to simply "move on" and have another child. This societal and familial expectation acts as a catalyst, triggering a quiet but devastating descent into anguish that feels all too real and deeply uncomfortable to witness.
Naturally, a character study of this nature lives or dies entirely on the shoulders of its lead, and fair play to Adriana Matoshi. She does a cracking job, anchoring the film with a performance that is both fragile and fiercely internalised. She conveys volumes with just a weary glance or a slumped posture, ensuring the audience feels the crushing weight of her isolation without a single line of forced exposition. However, I must issue a fair warning: the pacing is deliberately, unapologetically slow.
It is a deeply depressing, methodical watch that is certainly not for everyone. If you’re looking for a brisk narrative or an uplifting resolution, you’re going to find this a bit of a chore to sit through. But if you are a fan of deliberate, emotionally demanding cinema that respects the complex, messy reality of trauma, you will likely find a lot to appreciate here. It’s a gripping, well-acted exploration of grief.
Zana occupies a particular niche that fans of austere, festival-circuit drama will recognise immediately: polished but unremarkable on a technical level, and wholly dependent on the weight of its subject matter and the quality of its central performance. Whether that is enough will depend entirely on your patience for films that prioritise feeling over incident. It is the kind of work that sits alongside And Then We Danced in representing a corner of European cinema that rarely gets a mainstream airing, where cultural specificity and personal history do a great deal of the heavy lifting. For anyone with an interest in post-conflict storytelling, or in the way societies impose impossible expectations on women who are already carrying more than their share, it is well worth the 97 minutes. Just perhaps not on a night when you need cheering up.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2019 | Watched: 2026-07-29
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Zana (2019) on YouTube
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