Piro Milkani

Fiore, an Italian conman, arrives in post Communist Albania with Gino, his young apprentice, to set up a shoe factory that will never open. The con requires a native Albanian, so they designate Spiro, an impoverished and confused former political prisoner as chairman of the board. When Fiore returns to Italy to get government funds for the project, Spiro unexpectedly disappears and Gino sets out on a journey to find him. The search leads him to discover Spiro's tragic personal history and witness Albanian poverty firsthand.

...και το τρένο πάει στον ουρανό

Albania 1997. Some ghostly, deteriorated video footage keeps Julien awake and obsesses him every night. Almost two decades after the murder of his wife, Angela, Julien returns to Albania with a determination to investigate her mysterious death, amidst a sea of impossible records, police files and visions of Beyond.

This lyrical comedy story takes place in two hot days in the small South Bohemian village. On the shore of a small pond, summer guests and local youth meet. As is typical of the works of Hrubín, it is a conflict of youth and age, life and death, represented by the medical student Zuzana and her beloved Jirka.

Albania and neighboring Yugoslavia officially broke ties in 1948. But in 1971, the Hoxha regime was honored to welcome the ethnic Albanian actor Bekim Fehmiu (1936-2010), at the time an international star in Yugoslav theater and film. Before his trip to Albania, Fehmiu had appeared in the popular Italian television smash The Odyssey (1968) and the Cannes-winning I Even Met Happy Gypsies (1967). Dokufest will also feature a photo exhibit of recently-discovered still images taken during Bekim Fehmiu’s Albanian visit.

Bekim Fehmiu was the first Eastern European actor to star in Hollywood during the Cold War, and he was one of the internationally best-known actors.