Rent Zana (2019)

Disturbing study of wartime trauma - Zana review by PD

This disturbing psychological drama from Kosovan documentary maker Antoneta Kastrati is a very painful, sombre meditation on lingering wartime trauma.

The film takes place in a sleepy rural corner of western Kosovo 10 years after the Balkan wars have ended, but the scars of conflict still shape the psychic landscape. Kastrati presents contemporary Kosovan society as suspended in limbo between the old world and the new, between science and superstition, where smartphones and YouTube videos co-exist with beliefs in witches and demons, fortune tellers and faith healers. There's quite a few horror-film-style touches used to illuminate central character Lume’s fractured mental state which are a bit hit-and-miss (much more effective is a scratchy VHS tape depicting the exhumation of wartime casualties), with echoes of Rosemary’s Baby and Don’t Look Now, but of course the real 'horror' is how Lume is treated rather than any of the spells or exorcisms she is subjected to.

Zana is also about the inner wounds of patriarchy and misogyny, which are relentlessly (and often not very subtly) depicted. Even in her most despairing depths, Lume is rejected by family on all sides, demeaned by her husband and harshly judged by her peers, her social standing reduced to her duty as a baby-breeding machine, although Kastrati is careful to avoid placing the blame on mono-dimensional villains: Lume's husband Ilir, for example, evidently has tender and protective feelings for his wife despite their unbalanced gender roles. Nevertheless, the film remains a powerful indictment of how Lume's family see her role,; the fact that Lume seems to slowly losing her mind is agonizingly believable in these circumstances.

The plot is a little disjointed and repetitive, but Adriane Matoshi’s quietly devastating performance conveys a lot with very little, her impassive features revealing submerged grief with scant trace of melodrama. Lume is clearly intended to be emblematic of an entire generation of Kosovan women still scarred by wartime trauma, and in a heartbreaking last word, Kastrati ends with a dedication to her mother Ajshe and sister Luljeta, both killed in the conflict 20 years ago.