Nik is a carefree teenager in a small town with a crush on the school beauty and ambitions to start his own internet café. His world is suddenly up-ended when his father and uncle become entangled in a land dispute that leaves a fellow villager murdered. According to a centuries-old code of law, this entitles the dead man's family to take the life of a male from Nik's family as retribution. His uncle in jail and his father in hiding, Nik is the prime target and confined to the home while his younger sister Rudina is forced to leave school and take over their father's business. (Sundance Selects)
"The Forgiveness of Blood" is set in present-day northern Albania, but this drama about a blood feud between families could just as easily have taken place centuries earlier. The correspondence between the new and the ancient is what gives the film its resonance.It’s an American film about Albania that immerses itself entirely in another culture, including its actors and language. Watch The Forgiveness of Blood Movie Online
Nik (Tristan Halilaj) is a gangly, small-town teenager who wants to start his own Internet cafe and fancies the school beauty (Zana Hasaj). Then his father, Mark (Refet Abazi), gets into a land dispute with the pugnacious Sokol (Veton Osmani) and everything in the life of Nik's family is overturned. Sokol is stabbed to death, Nik's uncle is imprisoned, and Mark goes into hiding. According to a 15th-century code of law called the Kanun, still observed today, the injured party can take the life of a male from Nik's family as retribution, or seek outside mediation. Sokol's clan is not the outside mediation type.
The film's director, Joshua Marston, is American, but, as in his previous film, "Maria Full of Grace," about a Colombian girl who accepts a job as a drug smuggler, he does a commendable job of immersing himself in a foreign culture. He is no doubt im-measurably aided here by his Albanian co-screenwriter Andamion Murataj, who also acted as coproducer and helped cast the film with a group of mostly nonactors. The expressiveness of the faces of these amateurs has an authenticity that sometimes eludes the film itself, which is somewhat inert as drama and reminiscent of other movies about warring clans. The pent-up situation of Nik's family keeps grinding the action, such as it is, to a halt.Still, the film stays with one. My favorite character is not Nik but his 15-year-old sister, Rudina (Sindi Lacej), who takes over her father's bread delivery route in his rickety wagon and makes a go of it against all odds.
He may have exchanged Colombian drug dealers for Albanian farmers, but director Joshua Marston hasn't strayed as far as it seems from his award-winning 2004 debut Maria, Full of Grace. In The Forgiveness of Blood, he focuses once again on young people caught in the backlash of adult misdeeds, trying to survive in an environment of minimal choices and maximal danger.Told mostly through the eyes of Nik (Tristan Halilaj), a lively teenager whose carefree life is abruptly derailed through no fault of his own, the film is an immersive look at the power of archaic traditions to sabotage a transitioning culture.When a land dispute between a hotheaded neighbor (Veton Osmani) and Nik's father (Refet Abazi) ends with the former dead and the latter in hiding, the dictates of custom supersede the law: In accordance with a 15th-century code known as the Kanun â€" still observed today â€" the bereaved clan may seek revenge by killing a male from the murderer's family. Within the space of a few hours, Nik's Facebook-and-motorcycles existence has been transformed by the perils of a blood feud.
Given the premise, Forgiveness is a remarkably peaceful film, one that keeps its music subtle and its violence on the margins. Shooting on location in northern Albania and using nonprofessional actors, Marston (who wrote the script with an Albanian colleague, Andamion Murataj) conjures an atmosphere of slowly swelling threat that is queasily effective.A loophole in the Kanun guarantees Nik's safety if he remains indoors â€" for years, if necessary â€" and the psychological burden of this endless siege becomes increasingly oppressive. Forced to abandon his dreams of opening an Internet cafe and pursuing his classroom crush (Zana Hasaj), Nik fumes against the father who refuses to turn himself in to the police â€" an act that would at least offer hope for mediation with the victim's family.Richly photographed by Rob Hardy (who gave Red Riding: 1974 its almost surreal bleakness), this meticulously researched story (Marston spent a month interviewing families trapped in these vendettas) reveals a culture dominated by male pride and patriarchal selfishness.
Unavoidably claustrophobic â€" Nik's confinement is also our own â€" the film breathes more easily in the company of his resourceful 15-year-old sister, Rudina (a fine Sindi Lacej). Once a promising student with a bright future, Rudina must take over her father's bread-delivery route to support the family, and her evolution from laughing schoolgirl to wily earner lends the film texture and depth. The sins of the fathers may be visited upon the sons, but Rudina's plight reminds us that daughters pay, too. And there really isn’t a bum scene in it. But just as Marston’s scrupulous attention to local custom and devotion to social realism recall the work of John Sayles (Lone Star), his occasionally enervating style also recalls Sayles at his worst. The Forgiveness Of Blood, like Maria Full Of Grace, again finds Marston traveling to a foreign land where his young hero is forced into a life-or-death situation. But where the earlier film was propelled by the tension inherent in its premise of a pregnant Colombian teenager working as a drug mule, the new film labors to generate tension in a situation where it should be crackling.
In a north Albanian locale where horse-drawn carriages share the road with modern cars and the kids are into PlayStation and smartphones, Tristan Halilaj plays a teenager whose future is cast into doubt when the long-simmering conflict between his family and a rival clan boils over into violence. When his father and uncle stab a man from the opposing familyâ€"over a slight too petty to dignify such a responseâ€"Halilaj and his relatives are confined to their home indefinitely, lest they risk a bloody retaliation that may be coming their way regardless. The independent-minded Halilaj feels hung up in a pointless war that isn’t of his making, but wriggling free comes with huge risks and potentially compounded tragedy. Watch The Forgiveness of Blood Movie Online
The Forgiveness Of Blood has a strong premise, and Marston has clearly worked hard to get ancient traditions right, like the presence of mediators to negotiate between the two familiesâ€"abiding not by the letter of the law, but by codes dating back centuries. And in Halilaj’s character, he’s created a potent symbol of youth and modernity as it bumps up against the intractable forces of historic conflict. But Marston doesn’t have a great facility for suspense filmmaking: Aside from holding one long shot of Halilaj in front of a big kitchen window, clear bait for snipers on the other side, the sense that someone could get killed at any moment is more implied than felt. Earnestness becomes a poor substitute for danger.
