Lorin Terezi triumphed at the twenty-fifth edition of Dokufest/International Documentary and Short Film Festival, winning the National Grand Prize with his new documentary Searching for Poetry.

World premiere and first prize. This extraordinary European documentary could not have got off to a better start on the international film festival circuit.

Lorin Terezi about Searching for Poetry:

We had known Fili for some time, together with Arnen, who works on stories of communism. He is an honest and deeply affected man, and he casually told us about the notebooks of poetry he had hidden during the dictatorship. He was convinced he could find them, and we decided to shoot the documentary with a very small budget, hoping to capture this search — this extraordinary journey between the past and the present, between memory and oblivion. I chose to film the documentary in a direct and authentic way, staying as close as possible to the truth, creating conditions in which the characters could forget they were being filmed, so that their emotions and their search could be as natural and unguarded as possible.
Searching for poetry in a time of technology and bad music may seem outdated; it is the era of short essays and bombastic texts. But poetry still lives within us with the same force, and that is what drives us to tell Fili’s story. Saying “I miss poetry” today may sound pathetic, but its absence is exactly what draws us toward the pursuit of beauty and the immortal, that which has survived in secret for over fifty years.
For me, Fili’s story is not only a search for poetry, but also a portrait of an era and the people who represent political prisoners. They were not criminals; they were punished for refusing submission and for demanding freedom. Through my grandmother’s memories, I envision poorly fed, poorly clothed men, their hands chained, laboring exhausted under armed supervision, building apartments far from the wet walls of the prison cells, stripped of their identity as individuals. They worked for the dictatorship, but their minds and spirits remained free, seeking ways to resist violence and to preserve their dignity.
Albania, in a long and turbulent transition, has still not held the perpetrators of communism accountable; some of them are even regarded as heroes. The prison no longer exists, as if someone had wanted to erase the traces of survival and hope. The perpetrators continue to live freely, even portraying themselves as victims.
The documentary reflects on oblivion, collective suffering, and a society where memory of the past, sacrifice, and freedom is still incomplete. It is about ordinary people striving to reclaim the hidden beauty of the past and the poetry that has survived in silence.

Stay tuned, because in a few days’ time we’ll be announcing a second qualifying festival for the Oscars and the EFAs, where this magnificent documentary has been selected.

Stay tuned, because in a few days’ time we’ll be announcing more successes for our films.

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