Bota Café

Directed by Iris Elezi e Thomas Logoreci

Distributed by PMI e Istituto Luce Cinecittà

SYNOPSIS
Bota (Albanian for “the world”) is a cafe situated on the edge of a vast area of marshland in a remote part of Albania. The cafe is the focal point for the protagonists of this compelling debut by Iris Elezi and Thomas Logoreci. Affable Juli, the life and soul of the cafe, takes care of her sick grandmother Noje and has various financial worries; her greatest desire, however, is to leave the place that brought only misery upon her family. Her friend, the attractive, temperamental Nora, is trying to work through her relationship with a married man, the cafe’s enterprising owner and Juli’s cousin, Ben. When construction begins on a new motorway near the cafe, it seems as if big changes are ahead for all of them. The directors set their story in a godforsaken region where, during communist supremacy, enemies of the regime were sent with their entire families against their will. The filmmakers skilfully exploit the genius loci of the desolate landscape and, aided by a period score and beguiling long shots, they flawlessly evoke the atmosphere of a place where the past still encroaches upon people’s lives.

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