On the morning of April 2, 1991, I was sitting in a classroom in Shkodër, and nobody would let us go home. I was a young girl in school, and outside, the whole town seemed to be in the streets. Our teachers could see the demonstration from the windows, and they didn’t know what to do, so they kept us inside and held on to us, one child at a time, until our parents came to take us home.
Across town, my sister Greta was at the Jordan Misja school, and she was in the middle of it. When the police moved against the crowd, she was one of the students hit with a rubber baton.
By the end of that day, four young men had been shot and killed in the square: Arben Broci, Bujar Bishanaku, Besnik Ceka, and Nazmi Kryeziu. The protest had begun two days after Albania’s first multi-party elections, when the Communist Party still claimed victory, and it became one of the moments that broke the old regime. We were children, and we didn’t understand it all yet, but we never forgot it.
The story no one had told
Years later, when Greta and I were making films in Los Angeles, I kept coming back to that day. No Albanian director had ever told the story of April 2, and it felt like it was slowly being forgotten. I’m from Shkodër, and it was the heart of how communism finally broke in our country, so I felt that if anyone was going to tell it, it should be us.
We didn’t want to make a documentary. We wanted to tell it through one family. Helena, played by Greta, is a literature teacher in Shkodër who lives with her parents and her seven-year-old daughter, Lola. When the protests reach the square, Helena has to decide what she is willing to leave behind.
Lola’s scenes are my own memories. She sits in her classroom while the noise grows outside, and her teacher holds her there until her family comes for her. When I wrote those pages, I was writing about the little girl I had been.
Going home
We shot Shqipe/Eagle in July 2012, twenty-one years after that day, in the same streets and squares where it happened. It was bittersweet to go back. We filmed with my cousins, my neighbors, and the people I grew up around, and everyone helped. Everyone seemed grateful that we had come home to tell it.
Our crew came from four countries: America, Serbia, Macedonia, and of course Albania. It still feels like a small miracle that we understood each other at all, because we spent every day translating back and forth between three or four languages. And for Greta, it was the first time she got to play an Albanian woman in her own language, which meant more to her than I can say.
Forty-five degrees in the square
We had six days to shoot, and every one of them was brutally hot. It was around forty-five degrees Celsius, well over a hundred in Fahrenheit, and we were dressing people in jackets and police uniforms and asking them to run through the streets again and again.
The crowd scenes were the hardest and the most rewarding part of the whole film. The people of Shkodër filled the streets for us, and our first AD organized them all with incredible patience. Most of our actors had never acted before, especially the students and the extras, but they were so happy to be part of it that they gave everything they had. Many times, I only had to give someone a direction once or twice, and they understood exactly what I needed. Shkodër has always been a city of artists, musicians, poets, and actors, and I think you can feel that in every one of those faces.
One day with Ndriçim Xhepa
For the role of Besim, we reached out to Ndriçim Xhepa, one of Albania’s most respected actors. He liked the idea right away, and working with him was a pleasure. He was completely professional, and we impressed him too.
We had told him we would only need him for one day. After about seven hours, we finished his last shot and told him he was free to go. He looked at us and said, “What? We’re done?” I told him yes, he was wrapped. He laughed and said he couldn’t believe how professional we were. He had heard us say one day, but he had expected to be there for a week.
So he stayed a couple more days anyway. We got him a hotel, and he had a wonderful time in Shkodër.
While I slept
If you ask me for the funniest moments from that shoot, it’s hard for me to answer, because for me those six days were almost all stress. But the crew had the time of their lives. Every night after we wrapped, they went to dinner together, and the Albanians showed everyone else the town, the castle above the city, and Shkodër Lake. People who had met a week earlier became friends.
I missed all of it. I was so physically and mentally tired that I went straight to sleep every night. I still feel a little sad I wasn’t part of that, but I’m so thankful they were. In a way, that was the town I remembered, opening its doors and taking care of people.
Twenty-five minutes
Eagle was conceived as a feature, with a second half that would follow Helena to America. Only the Albanian part was made, and it runs twenty-five minutes. But those twenty-five minutes hold the most important part of the story for me, because they are the part we lived.
Those twenty-five minutes hold the most important part of the story, because they are the part we lived.
Twenty-one years after a teacher held me in a classroom on the worst day our town had ever seen, I came back to Shkodër, stood in the same streets, and said “action.” I would love to go back again one day and tell another story there.
Watch Shqipe/Eagle Watch the trailer
Written by Vilma Zenelaj. Shqipe/Eagle was written and directed by Vilma Zenelaj, with Greta Zenelaj as Helena. Shot on location in Shkodër, Albania.
Sources: our own memories, and our interviews with Shqiptarja.com (August 2012) and VOAL (2012); Tirana Times, Zenelaj sisters to shoot film on early 90s incidents; Kujto.al, Viktimat e 2 prillit 1991 në Shkodër; Zëri i Amerikës, Shkodër, përkujtohet 2 Prilli i vitit 1991.
