Audience Member
Directed by Antoneta Kastrati, Zana (2019) forces the viewer to confront a dark history that, while being regionally specific to Kosovo, delivers universal messages of the dangers of repression. The restoration of peace in Kosovo has not relieved Lume (Adriana Matoshi) of the stresses of war. Despite her family's efforts to deny her struggles with mental health, Lume's past refuses to stay buried, breaking through the facade of repression that she is made to live behind.
The plot of Zana is layered, focusing on the bereaved Lume to tell a larger story of post-war trauma and survivor's guilt. In post-war Kosovo, Lume and her husband Ilir (Astrit Kabashi) are struggling to have another child. The confusion of Lume's past and present is instantly likened to her inability to conceive another child, with the opening scenes of the film establishing a link between the two that is instantly denied by her domineering mother-in-law (Fatmire Sahiti). Unable to properly process her experiences, let alone express her emotions, Lume passes between a number of specialists with varying degrees of legitimacy until her behaviors are attributed to possession by a Jinn that has taken the form of her daughter. Zana is not, however, a supernatural horror movie but rather an introspective study of trauma and denial in a post-war society that emphasizes the horrors of reality. Lume's mind and body are being manipulated by external forces into abandoning her past, but she is tethered by the memory of her daughter.
A meta-commentary on the excavating potential of modern technology, the film explores the ever-developing relationship between memory and visual media. The pressures of holding onto the memory of Lume's daughter are amplified by the reality that she is the only one doing so. Calling attention to the often forgotten or overlooked effects of war on civilians, Lume's grief is hindered by the lack of any visual evidence of her daughter's life. A pivotal and revealing scene in the film, the memorial to those who were lost in the war years ago deepens the connection between visual representation and memory. On the wall of victims, there is not a picture of Zana Kelmendi, the blank frame reflecting only her name and her age, 4. Ilir cries at the memorial while Lume stands with him, stalwartly staring ahead. She is not allowed to grieve like her husband, to express her emotions. The allure of a video that might have captured Zana motivates Lume and worries her mother-in-law whose attempts to control what Lume sees backfire. The final scene of the film displays the correct tape to the viewer; Lume is never able to see it. The limited yet significant role of technology in the film grounds the inherently regional story in a global framework of mediated memory. The presence of technology paired with the constant references to childbirth and new life emphasizes the abundance of social and personal progression that surrounds Lume as she attempts to grapple with, let alone process, the trauma of losing her daughter. Without visual evidence of her daughter's existence, Lume's mind finds a way to intrude the memories into her life.
The haunting film creatively touches on stigmas surrounding mental health and the pressures of motherhood while oscillating between Lume's present and past, ultimately suggesting that the two are inextricable. Despite what she is told, Lume is not haunted by a supernatural entity but rather by her past. Kastrati communicates Lume's trauma to the viewer through jarring visuals that serve to confuse and shock. Progressively exposing the viewer to Lume's internal struggle as a grieving mother who is facing the pressures of having another child, the director inserts flashes of the past that are at times indistinguishable from the present, forcefully blending the two time periods in film. For example, the opening scene, in which Lume tends to a cow, is interrupted, transforming the cow into nothing more than a rotting corpse in the ground. Her surroundings constantly remind Lume of the war, its memory persisting in the otherwise innocent landscape of her home. The association between her environment and the past inhibits external efforts to repress the trauma of losing her daughter, culminating in the invasion of the memory of Zana's death into Lume's mind.
An important film, Zana explores the tragedies of human life with nuance and care. Particularly today, Lume's story is necessary for its representation of true stories that often go untold or unheard and its recognition of the effects of war that persist long after official resolution. This poignant film is an essential watch for viewers of all backgrounds that will leave a lasting impression.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/25/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The aspects of loss contribute a great deal to the psychological well-being of any human being. Antoneta Kastrati's film Zana (2019) highlights the horrors of a broken post-war society in Kosovo, where not only the post-traumatic stress that exists for civilians following the war come to light, but the old-fashioned and misogynistic tropes regarding womanhood as well. In a war-torn country, where independence is not prioritized, Zana focuses specifically on the struggles of motherhood through the lens of the main character, Lume. Lume exhibits immense sorrow after losing her daughter, Zana, during the crossfire in the wat. As she struggles greatly, her husband, Ilir, can only pressure her to move on from their daughter's loss, even though haunting nightmares and evident psychological damage terrorize her. Zana also sheds light on the struggle for women to meet societal expectations regarding childbearing, where there is a load of pressure for women to reproduce. Kastrati's film intricately exposes topics of psychological terror, female commodification, and patriarchy that exist within a war-torn society.
Moreover, Kastrati demonstrates the societal issues of Kosovo through her use of cinematography done by her sister, Sevdije Kastrati. The film illuminates this seemingly dystopian society ten years after the Kosovo war and highlights the issues of post-traumatic stress and psychological damage following the war. Through the Horror-Esque tones throughout the film, the audience becomes mesmerized yet perplexed by these haunting dreams. Lume constantly experiences daunting nightmares where she sees her dead daughter or other ghostly hallucinations. Audience members are flipped back and forth between scenes of these nightmares of war and terror, to the scenes of beautiful country landscapes, introducing this more profound paradox within the critique of Kosovo society. There is a sense of harmony within the cinematography that Sevidje introduced to the film, as the beautiful countryside and peaceful sceneries fill the eyes of the audience. Yet, Kastrati exposes Lume's internal and subconscious struggles in an intensely realistic way, contributing to the fact that Lume's psychological terrors are entirely honest and present in her life. Lume's soul-stirring nightmares are not explicitly introduced, requiring the audience to differentiate between her subconscious state and her monotonous and orderly daily life. Simultaneously, another strange paradox exists in the Kosovo community that Kastrati creates, as Zana includes both a modern and industrialized civilization, while faith healers, witches, and fortune tellers co-exist within this community. The aftershocks of the war are deeply rooted within the film's plot, as Kastrati emphasizes how different the healing process is for each individual.
Additionally, Zana highlights the commodification of women and the struggle to live in a deeply rooted patriarchal society. Lume struggles to withstand her social stature as she is pressured and implicitly judged by her family on all sides, her peers, and fellow civilians to have another child and begins to move on from the traumatic death of Zana. This old-fashioned yet modern society sets expectations for women to be childbearing individuals who must complete their duties and remain pleasant. Men in the film are portrayed to police the women in their everyday lives in the village, exerting robust control over female bodies and minds alike. Lume feels immense pressure from Ilir, as his only form of closure appears to come from the rebirth of a new child.
However, this pressure does not only come from a patriarchal perspective, as there is additional matriarch coercion, causing the power dynamic in the film to be construed. Ilir calls upon his mother, Remzije, who lives with the married couple, to take more decisive action toward Lume. However, Remizije exhibits the old-fashioned nature of Kosovo through her outward pressure to bring Lume to various doctors and never honestly asks her how Lume feels about her grieving process. This decision to include female pressure makes it difficult for the audience to pinpoint a particular villain within the film, making the actual offender the corruptly war-torn society of Kosovo that remains compliant with misogynistic perspectives of all forms.
Though Lume experiences force and demands from both the men and women in her life, she remains passive throughout the film, muted, disturbed, and traumatized by her experiences. Her mental health is never a priority to anyone around her, even though she exhibits outward expressions of broken-hearted sorrow, depressive behavior, and frighteningly traumatized emotions. The writer and director of the film, Anotenta Katrati, intricately criticizes her homeland and includes forms of her struggles as she writes at the end of the film that she lost her mother and sister during the war. Through the complexity of the plot and villainous characters within the film, Kosovo's backward, unfair, and commodifying post-war society comes to question as the audience watches this film. Through the familial power of Antoneta's writing and directing and Sevdije's incredible camera work, the audience catches a glimpse of a dark, paradoxical, and misogynistic world that falls together beautifully within the film Zana (2019).
Keywords: Film-Review, Patriarchy, Post-Traumatic Stress, Commodification, Misogyny
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/19/23
Full Review
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