Cannes Review: Blerta Basholli’s Dua

Alex Heeney reviews Blerta Basholli’s Cannes Critics Week film, Dua, about the Kosova War through the lens of a young teenage girl.

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Blerta Basholli’s perceptive feature debut, Dua, treads through familiar terrain — the experience of war through a teenage girl’s eyes — with a sharp eye that makes it feel fresh. It is not that the titular Dua doesn’t understand what’s going on around her, as a younger protagonist mightn’t, so much as that nobody really directly talks about it, so it seeps into her life in confusing and traumatic ways. 

The war in question is the Kosovo War, which makes the film a great companion piece to recent films about the Yugoslav Wars like Quo Vadis, Aida?, The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, and When the Phone Rang. But unlike those films, this is neither the story of adults who fully understand the situation nor of an adult looking back at their childhood: the film firmly places us in Dua’s shoes, with the camera staying close to her perspective without constantly resorting to being handheld.  

On her way to school at the beginning of the film, Dua and her sister walk by the corpse of a woman who is bloody from being bludgeoned. They don’t discuss it. But later, she eavesdrops on her sister’s conversation with her mother about how they know who behaves like this: the police. It’s emblematic of how the horrors of the war seep into Dua’s fairly comfortable existence with her family in their home. 

From a safe home life to a less safe world outside

For most of the film, Dua’s home life is fairly safe and comfortable. She wrestles with her older brother, dances to rock music with her sister, and gathers around the TV nightly with her family for news of whether the UN and the United States might intervene with what’s going on outside her door. Her parents are doing their best to keep the home safe: one of the earliest scenes finds Dua’s father — a metalworker by trade — and brother putting up a security door behind their front door.

But the war seeps into her life as soon as she leaves her home — and increasingly, it will arrive on her doorstep. At school, old classmates are constantly leaving the country forever, while new classmates arrive as refugees. She has to take a different route home from school because Serbian bullies with a dog might attack her if she doesn’t. 

Trouble arrives on Dua’s doorstep in Blerta Basholli’s film

Trouble first arrives on her doorstep after she goes out looking for it. After being sexually assaulted by an older man, she follows him home and lashes out by destroying his car and beating up his young son. But before long, the boy’s mother arrives on their doorstep, threatening to go to the police if damages aren’t paid. It’s a threat Dua’s mother has to take seriously: getting on the police’s radar again could get Dua’s older brother and father arrested and disappeared forever. They don’t have the money to pay though, and it’s only when they close the door on the woman, that Dua’s mother explains the situation. Dua’s actions could have consequences on her family that she hadn’t considered.

From there, trouble keeps knocking on their door — and eventually ventures inside. In one of the film’s most powerful scenes, a mass of people pile into Dua’s apartment, screaming in pain. Her mother fetches onions. When Dua briefly opens the window to see what is happening, she sees people running through the tear-gas-filled streets. As the situation worsens, Dua keeps doing what normal teenagers do: hang with her friends, avoid bullies, and go to school. But the veneer of normalcy becomes increasingly thin, until her parents can no longer ignore it.ith his enthusiastic decision to travel the country with his sister — suggests he shares his longing.