Kosovo: The Making of a State is an ambitious two-part documentary examining Kosovo’s long and unfinished journey from war to statehood, 25 years after NATO’s intervention. At its heart is the village of Çabër/Cabra in northern Kosovo — a place filmmaker Eki Rrahmani has been filming, revisiting and returning to for a quarter of a century.
Across 25 years of footage, Çabër becomes more than a location. It becomes the emotional and political spine of the film: a village through which Kosovo’s unresolved history can be seen in human form. Rrahmani first filmed there in 1999 for Now You Exist, Now You Don’t, returned in 2004 with The Children of Cabra, and now completes a remarkable long-form engagement with a third film that uses the village as a microcosm of Kosovo’s fragile peace, divided memory and contested future.
The film returns to Fitim Veseli, the only survivor of the River Ibër tragedy of March 2004, when three Albanian children drowned — among them Fitim’s brother and two cousins. Their deaths helped trigger the worst crisis in Kosovo since NATO’s intervention, exposing how quickly grief, fear and mistrust could ignite a society still living with the wounds of war.
Filmed in the aftermath of renewed tensions in the north and the armed attack in Banjska, the documentary moves from the intimate life of one village to the highest levels of political and international decision-making. Rrahmani speaks to an exceptional range of voices from Kosovo, Serbia and the international community — amongst others, Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti, Interior Minister Xhelal Sveçla, former NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson, former Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić, Serbian human rights activist Sonja Biserko, journalist Jeta Xharra, former BBC journalist and Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith, former KLA fighter Lirak Çelaj, and prominent Vreme journalist Filip Švarm.
Few films on Kosovo bring together such a long personal archive, such intimate access to one community, and such a wide range of influential voices from both sides of the divide. Blending personal memory, political investigation and historical reflection, Kosovo: The Making of a State asks what it really means to build a state in the shadow of war, and whether Kosovo can move towards lasting peace while the wounds of the past remain so close to the surface.
