Afterwar (2024)

AFTERWAR is filmed over 15 years. Director Birgitte Stærmose originally met the cast in 2008 when they were children selling cigarettes and peanuts on the streets of postwar Pristina and returned again in 2018 and to film another 5 years with them as adults. The film builds on the lived experience of the cast and is based on extensive interviews and a co-creation process with them. They tell their collective story through monologues spoken directly to the camera as well as staged, scripted scenes, sometimes together with professional actors and sometimes with amateurs. This is not a documentary; nor a true fiction film, but a performative testament to the war that lives on in people, when the fighting is over.