After losing their livelihood in a village, a family in Kosovo is forced to move to the capital, Pristina. But the family struggles “in pursuit of a place in a hyper-capitalist society.”
This brief description for director Visar Morina’s (Exile, Babai) Shame and Money just teases some of the stresses and challenges its characters face amid a high cost of living. The drama had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize. The award qualifies the film to compete for the best international feature film Oscar under the updated Academy rules.
The cast is led by Astrit Kabashi and Flonja Kodheli and also features Kumrije Hoxa, Fiona Gllavica and Alban Ukaj.
Morina co-wrote the script for the vicky bane and Schuldenberg Films production with Doruntina Basha. Janis Mazuch was the cinematographer, while Joëlle Alexis was the editor. The producers are Fabian Altenried, Sophie Ahrens, Kristof Gerega, Pia Hellenthal and Morina. Oscilloscope Laboratories acquired North American distribution rights and is planning to release the movie in early 2027.
THR‘s review called Shame and Money “a tense and crushing view of the global economy through the eyes of a farmer in Kosovo.” The Sundance jury lauded the director for “his powerful and unique portrayal of human dignity in contemporary Kosovo that universally resonates,” calling Morina “a sensitive filmmaker who masterfully draws the audience into the daily struggles of a family [and who has] deep empathy for his characters.”
Morina talked to THR about Shame and Money, which is his third film contending for the best international Oscar after Babai and Exile, and how it tells a story that resonates beyond Kosovo –and not only because the film shows a statue of Bill Clinton, which was erected because, as U.S. President, he led the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against what was then Yugoslavia, which forced the security forces of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević to withdraw from Kosovo.
What was the inspiration for Shame and Money?
I shot my previous film, Exile, in Cologne. Flonja and Astrit, who are now the leads, had a tiny scene together. After the shoot, I took a picture of them, and they were standing next to each other. And when I was looking at it, it somehow reminded me of my parents.
I kept going back to this image, and then Corona started, and I was thinking a lot about my parents and also worried about them. They live near Stuttgart. And somehow this image and the fact that I was worried about them got me to a point where I started to think of them less as my parents, and more as two random people being deeply influenced by politics, in their case because of Milošević. They are pawns of politics, which they don’t understand. But they have to deal with the consequences. So, the starting point was to think about how it would be if they left home now and not 30 or more years ago.
Did you know the village where the family lives at the start of Shame and Money?
I actually wrote about the village I grew up in. I even wrote the film for the house in which I grew up. But it has not been used for 20 years, and it was in such a different shape. In the end, we decided to film it somewhere else. But there are actually two shots in my village.
Did you focus on the universal experience that the local story, which you are telling, is reflecting today amid a cost of living crisis in many countries?
I was very much focused on making the story as local as possible. And I truly believe that if I do a good job, there is no way that other people won’t find themselves in those stories and in those things. I wanted to have the actual numbers, such as the price of peppers, rent, salary – the real numbers at the time we were shooting.
How do you think about life in Kosovo as being similar or different from other parts of the world?
Kosovo has gone through so many very different phases and so many breaks. In Germany [where I live], for example, people are so used to many structures that they don’t even think about them. But in Kosovo, everything is so new, and you see the structures rebuilding themselves. Basically, you see society trying to make sense of all these changes. You feel like you are in a lab watching a society form itself.
Tell me a bit about how you arrived at the title Shame and Money…
I went to Kosovo for research, exploring the housing and job market, and spoke to people who were looking for both. Alongside the existential hardship driving these people, there was another force present: shame in front of others and shame in front of oneself.
“Even your own mother doesn’t love you if you are broke,” said one man who was working as a day laborer. He sounded embarrassed when he said it. In Albanian, this sounds much harsher and more direct, describing someone who has just realized that even a mother’s love has a price.
That sounds scary!
This was something I thought was horrifying. But at the same time, I think there is a very strong connection between money and depression.
I believe it is impossible to sustain a relatively healthy self –whatever that self may be –if you are constantly forced to prove your worth to others and, even worse, to yourself. If you have to demonstrate again and again that you are capable, that you deserve to belong, that you are something, that you can do something. This inevitably leads to exhaustion and depression.
I did come away with a sense that the film was very much about humiliation versus…
That was actually a very, very important part. In the end, if I break everything down, it’s a question of dignity. And that’s why we also focused on showing cows and other animals with dignity, and the work people are doing with dignity – everything.
As a filmmaker, I can connect to this very much. If every day you put yourself on a street or wherever to find work, trying to convince others that you are worth being a part of it and that you are worth being seen, that you should be accepted, you get demoralized.
As a visual and overall experience, Shame and Money made me feel quite exhausted, very much like your main characters. Did you do anything special to make the experience so physical and intense?
That was basically the point –the physical experience. It was important not to put the characters on display, not to look down on them, [but] to take them seriously, and to put ourselves in their shoes as much as possible. They become poor, and poverty can also be portrayed in a very voyeuristic way. That’s why it was important to take the work they do seriously.
So we were very keen on making any work shown be done as you would usually do it. When we didn’t know how to do something, we asked experts.
Do you have any examples or so?
For example, I learned what it takes to bring a person from a wheelchair to the bed. You have to make sure that the sheet is very straight; otherwise, it will get complicated and difficult for the skin. And you use your legs as a brake so he does not fall. There are all these tiny things. And that exhausts the actors.
The effect of this was that it made the actors so focused on how they do things and move that their lines just came out. Their focus was less on how to say things or how to act and more on how to get this thing done.
What does qualifying for the international Oscar category mean for the film and you?
Oh, I´m excited. Hopefully, more people will see it. I’m also very glad that people praise the acting very much. So, yes, hopefully this will help with getting the film released in more places, and hopefully more people will watch it.