East of the West - Competition 2010 / Der Albaner / Germany, Albania 2010
A young Albanian mountain-dweller ends up in Germany as an illegal immigrant. His dream is to make enough money in order to be able to marry his beloved Etleva. But the "European dream” he cherishes, now that he is stuck in a country with no friends, experience or knowledge of the language, soon turns into a nightmare. In his socio-critical drama, debuting director Johannes Naber envisages his native Germany as a world which has no place for integrity, morality or innocence, at least not for young illegal immigrants.
Arben is a young Albanian mountain-dweller who occasionally crosses the border into neighbouring Greece, returning to his native village with money to help support his large family. When he finds out, however, that his secret love Etleva is expecting a baby and that her parents are demanding 10,000 EUR from him for the wedding, Arben sets off for distant Germany in search of bigger wages. Coming from a poor environment, he suddenly finds himself in the land of the affluent. But the "European dream” cherished by this illegal immigrant, now stuck in a country with no friends, experience or knowledge of the language, soon turns into a nightmare. The pledge to return within a few months with the required sum of money is fraught with all kinds of obstacles. In order to get what he wants, the naïve young man has to pay a high price.... In his socio-critical drama, debuting director Johannes Naber envisages his native Germany as a world which has no place for integrity, morality or innocence, at least not for young illegal immigrants.
104 min / Color, 35 mm
Director Johannes Naber
/ Screenplay Johannes Naber
/ Dir. of Photography Sten Mende
/ Music Oli Biehler
/ Editor Ben von Grafenstein
/ Producer Boris Schönfelder
/ Production Neue Schönhauser Filmproduktion GmbH
/ Cast Nik Xhelilaj, Xhejlane Terbunja, Ivan Shvedoff, Amos Zaharia, Stipe Erçeg
/ Contact Neue Schönhauser Filmproduktion GmbH
Johannes Naber (b. 1971, Baden-Baden) studied philosophy and philology in Berlin. He graduated in documentary film direction from the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy in Ludwigsburg in 1999. In 1995 he began working as a television and film gaffer. In 1999 he made the short film Popstar, and for television he shot the feature-length documentary Anfassen erlaubt (2005) and the short feature Der Zweifel (2008). In 2009 he was awarded the German Film Critics Association Award for his involvement in the screenplay for the historical drama North Face (Nordwand, 2008, dir. Philipp Stölzl). The psychological drama The Albanian is his feature film debut, screened in competition at the Moscow IFF.
Neue Schönhauser Filmproduktion GmbH
Neue Schönhauser Str. 19, 10178, Berlin
Germany
Phone: +49 30 343 910 21
Fax: +49 30 521 356 49
E-mail: [email protected]
Kim Liebeck
Johannes Naber
Film Director, Film Director
Ivan Shvedoff
Other, Tutor / Trainer
Kreshnik Xhelilaj
Actor
Dritan Huqi
Producer
Xhevdet Feri
Other
Boris Schoenfelder
Producer
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