LAETITIA VANCON
My home, my prison
The Vukaj family of northern Albania, have been trapped in a Blood Feud conflict for 20 years. Innocent of any wrong doing, they just belong to the "wrong" clan. Isolated, unconsidered, and depending on corrupted public administrations, they are deprived of their basic human rights. Nowadays blood feud is defined as a serious social plague in the Albanian society. It reveals the power vacuum that characterized post-communist Albania, and especially the extremely corrupt, slow, and unreliable judiciary system. It shows the incapacity of the state in defending the fundamental human right to life as the most fundamental and important right of individual protected by law.
The Albanian Parliament has approved hundreds of laws that appear pro European but have substantial flaws because they are not based on the Albanian reality. This justice system leaves the family of Noja without basic human rights: the right to education, social life, and freedom. Their house, the only place they are safe, according to the Kanun, is becoming their prison.
I find important to keep on informing about this issue, and to approach it with an intimate angle, in order to involve the viewer with universal emotions. What I focuse on, is not so much the feuds themselves but the idea of being in forced isolation, and how it feels for the different members of the family. The Vukaj family story is one that makes the world feel like a smaller place. It suggests that the similarities connecting us across continents and cultures are more resonant than the things that divide us. There are certain things we feel are beautiful and good, and we hope and hunger for them. Whatever happens we keep on moving further.