Mao Tse-tung

Colour, 35 mm
Albania, 2007, 91 min
Section: East of the West - Films in Competition

Synopsis

The source for the bizarre humour of this Balkan comedy is life in 1970 Albania as perceived by Roma community leader Hekuran Romalini. The denizens of a small southern town are disconcerted by a disruptive gypsy camp by the river. In the interest of averting conflict with the local authorities, Hekuran decides to name his ninth child after one of Albania’s current allies – the Great Helmsman Mao. Armed with propagandistic phraseology, the illiterate but sly fox Hekuran gets his way by appealing to the highest of the powers that be, the Chinese embassy among them, thus spinning an unbelievable, kaleidoscopic configuration of public figures and Romanies, whom he mobilises to sing revolutionary songs and movingly recite slogans from Mao’s celebrated “Little Red Book”… The author of the novel upon which this witty political metaphor is based is the well-known Albanian poet, novelist, essayist and diplomat Besnik Mustafaj. Popular theatre and film actor Fadil Hasa, who studied drama in former Leningrad, stars in the rewarding role of gypsy smart aleck Hekuran.

About the director

Besnik Bisha (b. 1958, Tirana) started out as an assistant director in the National Film Studio in 1981 and later made a number of documentaries and feature films that garnered a great deal of interest, particularly A Mother’s Heart (Zemra e nenes, 1992 – Silver Prize at the Salerno IFF), Bolero (1996, three awards at the European film festival in Saint-Etienne) and the documentary Kosovo 99 (1999). In 2002 Bisha held the office of general director of the studio Alba film and was later appointed professor of drama at the Academy of the Arts in Tirana. The comedy Mao Tse-tung (2007) is his latest feature film.