Behind the Scenes
Transforming my idea into a viable project was harder than expected. After seeking out a mentor, I began by creating a list of prompts about Albanian politics, history, and culture and gathering interview equipment such as cameras and microphones. Then I spent ten months visiting a series of diverse locations—public basketball courts, a national park, even the prime minister’s house—and asking strangers to converse. (Most interviews took place in Tirana, though one occurred in Dhërmi, a town in southern Albanian, and another took place in Madrid, Spain.)
Interviewing strangers was probably the most difficult part of the process: on my first outing, when I’d hoped to interview a celebrated community of booksellers, all but a few rejected me. Even so, I gradually became more confident about approaching strangers and explaining the purpose of my project.
The editing process also had its ups and downs. I had help with the first round of editing, and watching the switch from raw footage to a structured film was exciting. But after a few watches, it became obvious that I needed to re-edit my subjects’ actual thoughts, which required structuring, cutting, and adding captions. This process of getting the best out of each interview was very labor-intensive, as it took two full weeks of rewatching and condensing multiple interviews.
Finally, many interviews went differently from how I’d imagined them, providing me with countless topics to consider. For instance, while my teenage subjects disagreed on almost everything, corruption always found its way into the conversation—although, to my surprise, none of them could name specific examples of how corruption had affected them personally.
At the same time, my ongoing internship with the Socialist Party had cemented my interest in Albanian politics and the Flamingo Revolution (a youth-led movement opposing a foreign-backed luxury resort planned beside a protected lagoon), and I began asking my subjects more directly about their political views. It was illuminating to realize that while they all had strong opinions about government, they often struggled to explain the origin of these opinions. Since then, I’ve become fascinated by how political beliefs are created and shaped, particularly by people’s families and the media.