More Raça is a 26 year-old filmmaker, and film professor from Kosovo who was first inspired by the power of film When she was a 6 year-old refugee in Macedonia and when “Somone came to the camp with cartoons & Charlie chaplin”
I was six years old when I and my family had to leave our home in Kosovo and become refugees in Macedonia. The image I have in my memory is of my mom, sad and depressed, holding my hand, and my dad holding my 2 year-old brother in his arms. My mom was 26 then, the same age I am now. When we were sent to the camp in Macedonia, people were silent and no one spoke about the terror that had just happened. There were many people, but I was feeling lonely and sad. I missed my toys and my friends, I missed having someone who could smile at me, and all I was seeing was sad and desperate faces.
Then something magical happened. Someone came to the camp with cartoons and Charlie Chaplin movies, and for a while, there was a feeling that things will be alright, a feeling that I wasn’t alone. For a while I was happy, and the entire trauma that we went through went away. It was just me and the characters in the film. I only recently discovered that the organization who brought those films was FilmAid, and I wanted to tell FilmAid’s supporters how important that was for me.
Growing up, that experience had an enormous impact on my life. I knew and felt the power of film to change people’s lives and to heal wounds that nothing else can heal. It was this magic in those times of terror that made me want to become a film director.
“FilmAid brought that sparkle,
that magic, that I needed so desperately.”
I now make films about the struggles of women in Kosovo, and I am about to go into production on my first feature about the relationship between a daughter and her father who is afraid of losing his memory of her because of Alzheimer’s. It is a story based on my experiences in the camp in Macedonia with my grandpa, who would take me to see FilmAid’s movies and goof and imitate the characters for me, and who had Alzheimer’s at the time.
I am thankful for everyone who is working in different parts of the world to help people, especially those organizations like FilmAid who bring that sparkle, that magic that I needed so desperately at that time, and that every child deserves.