“With the help of her young lead, the film makes clear that Basholli is still a gifted storyteller.”

Being a 13-year-old girl is hard enough; you have to deal with a changing body, hormones, and peer pressure. Being a 13-year-old girl in an environment where you are seen as inferior and to be ethnically cleansed is a different matter altogether. So life in Pristina, at the end of the last century on the brink of the Kosovo War, is not easy for Dua (Pinea Matoshi). She is part of the Albanian community suffering under Serbian repression, though initially life seems pretty normal for a 13-year-old. Parties, makeup, and discussing which boy to kiss are top of mind, even for an introverted girl like Dua. But police raids aren’t supposed to break up the parties of early teens. Pretty quickly, Dua establishes its setting, even more so when Dua attends class in the living room of her teacher, all the kids cramped in a small space. New kids are introduced to the class, on the run from war elsewhere in Kosovo. One of them is Maki (Vlera Bilalli), and pretty soon Dua looks up to this tough, no-nonsense girl who seemingly has no fear of Serbian bullies. At home, her parents (Yllka Gashi and Kushtrim Hoxha) discuss the possibility of moving abroad, away from violence and oppression. Dua’s brother Vegim (Andi Bajgora) wants to enlist to fight the Serbians. But Dua has other things on her mind: Maki introduces her to judo, and as she gets better her shell breaks and her confidence goes up. A bit too much, in fact, because by violently seeking retribution for an earlier instance of sexual assault, she endangers her whole family.

After her highly successful 2021 feature debut Hive, Kosovar director Blerta Basholli returns with a coming-of-age drama that is inspired by the director’s own experiences in Pristina during the time period depicted, when Basholli herself was only a couple of years older than her protagonist. With Dua she creates a sober drama that effectively shows life under occupation and how that affects young people who are still trying to find their identity. Dua is going through the typical changes that come with transitioning into female adulthood, but gets little guidance from her mother who is too preoccupied with the family’s safety and her son’s wish to join the army. Notably, early in the film when Dua laments that she hasn’t had her first period yet, her mother tells her not to worry and that it will come. Once she does get her period, in a similarly composed shot, the mother is absent. Only when Dua gets the whole family in trouble do her parents notice the changes in their daughter. It’s not from lack of love, but in wartime everyday life starts to blend into the background.

That is partly because Dua is an introverted child, who only starts to blossom after gaining confidence through her judo and even through her period. This would be a difficult part for an actress of any age, in particular because of the restraint needed in the film’s earlier segments, but young Matoshi manages the transformation from shy wallflower to feisty teen with flair. Given that she is in virtually every scene and has to carry the film on her shoulders, her performance makes the film. Basholli often keeps the camera close to her lead actress, which at once makes Matoshi’s job more difficult but also tracks her character’s psyche from up close. It’s a wonderful combination, and one that makes Dua worthwhile. Outside of this, Basholli employs very few directorial flourishes, with more focus on story and character than on the visuals to relay the film’s themes. Consequently, Dua hardly stands out from similar social-realist films, although with the help of her young lead the film makes clear that Basholli is still a gifted storyteller.