About Nicolas
My name is Nicolas, and Albania Unfiltered started because of my own relationship with Albania, and my curiosity about how other young people see the country.
I was born in Spain and grew up between different cultures. My mother is Spanish and my father is Albanian-American. Although Albania had always been part of my identity, moving from Madrid to Tirana, Albania’s capital, at the age of 16 made me realize that knowing you are Albanian and actually understanding everyday life in Albania are two very different things. Once I actually lived here, I began paying much more attention to how young people around me talked about their country. Perhaps what most surprised me was that sometimes the same person could be extremely proud of their Albanian heritage while also being very critical of the problems that they saw around them.
That contradiction interested me.
Instead of forming my opinion based only on my own experience, I wanted to hear directly from other young people. That became Albania Unfiltered.
Albania Unfiltered
About the Project
The name Albania Unfiltered represents the main idea of the project. I wanted conversations to feel real rather than overly produced or scripted. Additionally, I wasn’t trying to make Albania look completely positive or completely negative. Indeed, giving young people space to explain how they see the country in their own words meant including optimism and frustration, and allowing people to disagree. And perhaps most important, it meant listening without trying to force every interview into the same conclusion.
I decided to build the project around one main question:
How do young people in Albania actually see their country, their identity, and their future?
While it was fascinating to see how different my subjects’ answers could be, some patterns appeared repeatedly. The issue mentioned most often across the interviews was corruption. At least twenty of the subjects I spoke with connected corruption to a lack of trust in institutions, limited opportunities, frustration with politics, and concerns about whether they could build the future they wanted in Albania.
Some people spoke with optimism about Albania’s future. Others focused more on problems they believe needed to change, such as healthcare, education, infrastructure, and corruption. Some felt deeply connected to Albania and wanted to build their future here, while others saw studying, working, or living abroad as an important part of their future.
Many conversations also showed that pride in Albania does not necessarily mean believing the country is perfect. Young people can care deeply about their culture and country while still wanting major things to improve.
That became one of the most important ideas behind Albania Unfiltered. The project is not meant to claim that these interviews represent every young Albanian; instead, it is a collection of individual perspectives. By putting those voices together, I hope the project gives people a more personal understanding of how the members of Albania’s younger generation see their country today.
Get Involved
Albania Unfiltered is still growing, and I would like to continue including more voices from young people across Albania.