Serbians in Kosovo

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

I will never understand all those ethnic and territorial conflicts in the Balkan region, but today I watched two documentary films that show the daily life in two Serbian monasteries in Kosovo. I maybe learned more from watching these two films than I would have learned from watching two “normal” documentaries about the topic. I added a reference to them in their respective Wikipedia articles. They are what I’d call “minimalistic style” films, produced with more love than money. They remind me “Les glaneurs” by Agnès Varda (who unfortunately did not share her work with people like me). They were produced by Kersti Uibo in 2002.

Narrow is the Gate shows the life of “the few Serbs who remain in Kosovo” through the eyes of 86 years old Sister Teodora in Gračanica Monastery, who “with a joke and a tear, tries to balance her hostility to Albanians with her religious calling to love them.”

This is the day catches daily life of the monks in church of St. John in Velika Hoča.