AGA’S HOUSE

An isolated mountain location in Kosovo offers the ideal conditions for a bastion of matriarchy to be established. Four women have been living in this “refuge” for some time: Emira, firmly oriented towards the pleasures of life, her best friend Lumja, the 70-year-old Gjyla, a widow forced to abandon her family home after her son was killed in the war, and the nurturing Kumrija, mother to the only male of the house – the nine-year-old Aga. The latter is forced to comprehend what adulthood truly is (perhaps bridging the past with the future) through unexpected ways, when a middle-aged Croatian woman arrives at the refuge, sowing the seed of doubt within the heart of this unconventional family. A holistic, edgy, uncompromising drama that gives voice to the members of society who have never experienced what “representation” means (either on- or off-screen), as they struggle to find their place in a precarious peace, cast in the shadow of collective trauma. The underlying tension in a film where a gurgle of laughter is heard, simmers brilliantly.