Tirana and Elsewhere

ABOUT THE FILM

“We went to church and at the same time founded a punk movement.”

After the communist regime collapsed in 1991, three young people in Tirana, the capital of Albania, found themselves in a world unknown to them. Wild years of radical personal re-orientation followed. The dictatorship had created a strict atheist society, in which for 24 years, belief was to be prohibited – religion was a crime. After such a change, how do values, conflicts and beliefs develop – in Tirana and elsewhere?

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  Belief in religion is simply a part of the national cultures of Western Europe and is just accepted as such. This documentary looks at a people whose struggle with spirituality is completely different. They have had to totally redefine and create the meaning of their beliefs from the base up. At the same time they are exposed to everything the western world has to offer. In a world that is progressively more lonely, consumerism, sex and drugs are easily available to quench its emotional thirst. How does a human being reconcile personal and spiritual visions with the pragmatic everyday reality we all face?