BELONGING

22-year-old Mikel, child of immigrant parents from Albania, is deported with little provocation and accelerated procedures from the USA; the only country he has gotten to know as home. From one moment to the next his family gets divided across the two sides of the Atlantic. While his 11-year-old sister wants to follow him, the reality that awaits him in his native country is utterly different from the one he is used to. And although Mikel never stops fighting for his return to America, his studies, his friends, and his girlfriend, the question emerging is whether ultimately this is the singular version of the future he dreams of. Honoring the title of their film to the highest degree, Kreshnik Jonuzi and Saevar Gudmundsson craft a genuine study on the meaning of “belonging,” its fluidity, and the revisions it must undergo as needed by the de facto circumstances, in a world operating in a manner that is cynical, unyielding, as well as impersonal.