Kosovar producer Valon Bajgora has an impressive track record: he produced Blerta Basholli's triple Sundance winner Hive [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Blerta Basholli
scheda film], which was later short-listed at the Oscars, and co-produced Visar Morina's Exile [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], which also premiered at Sundance and went on to win the top award at Sarajevo. His most recent release, Fisnik Maxville's The Land Within [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], starring Luana Bajrami, triumphed last year in Tallinn Black Nights' First Film Competition. Bajgora, with Ikonë Studio, has been selected to represent Kosovo in the European Film Promotion’s Producers on the Move programme at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. 

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Cineuropa: Can you tell us about the projects you are currently working on?
Valon Bajgora: We have completed the feature film Silence of Sirens by Gazmend Nela which I developed at EAVE in 2020. It has been submitted to several festivals and we are now waiting for the answers.

At the moment, I am developing my first crime mini-series, Kanun, written by Ariens Damsi and Giulio Rizzo and co-produced with Rome-based Eliofilm. It's a six-episode series that can be described as Narcos in the Balkans and will be shot in Kosovo, Albania, and most probably the Netherlands or Belgium. We are now gathering financing and we plan to start shooting by early 2025. 

I am bringing the next project by Blerta Basholli to Producers on the Move. This is her second feature, with the working title Era, and it's another woman empowerment movie. It's about Era, a 13-year-old-girl who is living in 1990s Kosovo. Back then, we had a parallel system to the Serbian one, including the school system — it was forbidden to teach in the Albanian language so we had to go to school in basements and private houses, and if the police caught you with Albanian books, you'd get punished and probably beaten up. 

Era is the youngest of four siblings and she's trying to establish herself in the family and in society. We see how this very innocent and shy but powerful girl is perceiving the pre-war tension, but she doesn't care about the political system. She wants to have her first kiss, her first love, she wants to go to parties and enjoy music. It's a very personal story for Blerta because it's her own biography, and for me as the producer as well, because I grew up in this system too. The script is very beautiful and Blerta is now co-writing the second draft with Swiss director and scriptwriter Nicole Borgeat who was the script consultant on Hive. I believe this will give the film a more universal touch. 

Right now we have development funding from Switzerland and Kosovo and we will soon start location scouting and casting sessions. We hope to start shooting by 2025. 

How do you see the current situation in the Kosovo film industry?
Kosovo is a young state with a young population and a film industry which did not exist 15 years ago. We are lucky because we have very talented directors and scriptwriters, as well as extremely talented actors of all ages. And I think it's the topics they're choosing, which are often based on true stories that don't exist anywhere else in Europe, that make international festivals and audiences so interested in our films. 

Until recently the exhibition network was very weak, but right now, in Pristina alone, there are 20 screens. Audiences are very interested in local films and the cinemas support us. When there is a new Albanian-language film, for Cineplexx, it's a priority. One problem is that there are no local distributors for these films so we have to do it on our own, but the box office results are very good. Seeing such large audiences is inspiring and confirms that we are on the right path. 

What are the biggest challenges for the industry?
The biggest challenge is that it's not a part of international conventions such as Eurimages or Creative Europe MEDIA, which makes it very difficult to co-produce and to finance a project in a proper way. This means we have to spend a lot more time fundraising than producers elsewhere, and always have to co-produce with neighbouring countries. We hope that Kosovo will one day become a member of these organisations, but it's a political problem and a political decision. 

In the meantime, we are making bilateral agreements. We already have them with France, Turkey, Israel, Albania, North Macedonia and Montenegro, and we are now negotiating with Switzerland and Croatia. We have worked on a new cinema law which is now at the second reading in the Parliament, and it should introduce tax rebates of 30% or 35% for international productions. This will be a big push for us. All the film professionals in the country are jointly working on this, and in the meantime, we will try to make the best of it. But we will not stop making films.