The film’s premiere and production
14 September brought the Tirana cinema premiere of the internationally acclaimed film “Daybreak”. I do not often write about films, and certainly do not consider myself an arts “critic” or “blogger”, but I could not resist writing about this film.
Albanian artistic productions are usually prejudged through the stereotype that the result cannot be good: the budget, the lack of experience, the miserable conditions… But “Daybreak” breaks that stereotype entirely. Watch it, and at the end you will have the same feeling left by one of those “Hollywood films” you discuss endlessly with friends.
Written and directed by Gentian Koçi. Extensive cooperation with institutions, media and production companies, at home and abroad. Starring Suzana Prifti, Adele Gjoka, Kasem Hoxha and Ornela Kapetani, the last of whom won the best actress award in Sarajevo for her portrayal of Leta.
A collaboration that has given the most chilling possible depiction of a terrible drama, stirring the morality of the stomach in all of us who judge everyone else, readily and with plenty of advice to dispense.
Characters and themes of the drama
Day really does break for a former nurse, a woman left widowed, unemployed and the mother of a small child. The cries of a malnourished little boy. The knocks of a landlord who wants his money.
Those few suitcases that must be kept ready. Because who knows where tomorrow will dawn. The reproachful looks of the people she owes money to.
The erased memory of her husband, remaining only as a former patient whose life she had been compelled to end mercifully. It all begins as day breaks, leaving no chance even for a peaceful sleep or a relaxing shower… because money makes everything possible, and if you cannot secure it morally, you have to prostitute yourself. Leta chooses to be paid to keep an old woman alive, a woman for whom breathing has lost its meaning…
Day really does break for a wife living far from her husband. An emigrant whose partner is in France. A daughter whose mother lies on her deathbed, but whose thoughts are elsewhere.
An only daughter, grown up quickly, who now confuses love for her mother with the mere duty to care for her. Day breaks for such a woman, gripped by suspicions of betrayal, deceit, neglect and loneliness at the hands of the man in France. Night goes entirely unnoticed, and day breaks for a person like this, who emigrates with a conscience “cleared” by hiring a former nurse like Leta to care for her mother’s final days.
Day really does break for an elderly woman, gripped by the illness of a slow death. Widowed for who knows how long, but made loneliest of all by her daughter’s coldness. Her solitude is broken only by the night’s stars, while in the day that breaks her only request is to be parted from the oxygen mask that keeps her alive, and simply to die.
When her last reason is extinguished in France, her pension becomes Leta’s only source of hope.
Day breaks for an entire society getting covered in mud as it waits for whatever bus happens to come. Toiling at menial, badly paid jobs. Making noise like a rusty door that has never been oiled.
A society corrupted in its hospital visits. Expecting a cure from “original” medicines, yet still finding the strength to prejudge, scold and lecture others on how life should be lived, maintained and secured…
This is a rough picture, without wanting to reveal the film’s plot, of what the characters must experience in this chilling film by Gentian Koçi. It walls in the death of love for one mother, shackles the sacrifices and efforts of another mother, even as they reach into crime, and rewards the whoring of gossip and envy that climbs up and down the apartment blocks of an entire society.
Koçi has masterfully chosen a title that says it all! Ornela Kapetani, for her part, fully deserves not only the recognition in Sarajevo but more besides… The ticket for this film costs many times less than the value it conveys!
One month after its international success at the 23rd Sarajevo Film Festival, this harrowing drama can now be seen here too.
I hope you will not miss it. You will better understand the importance of life, the value and meaning of love for those close to us, and how a mother’s capacity for sacrifice knows no bounds!