The Colors of Kosovo

By Britt Bom

During the Peace Lab course, every student has to make a project. This project can be anything really; a paper, a podcast, a magazine, a film, etc. Together with Lotte and Freke I choose to do the latter. Our initial goal was to make a short documentary that explains the situation in Kosovo and focuses on the notions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. We did this, first of all, because we wanted to create awareness about the situation in the Western Balkans, and specifically Kosovo. We feel like many young people who grew up in other parts of the world who have no idea what happened in the region and how this has affected (and still is at present) many people. Secondly, with our video, we hope to illustrate that in complex situations like these, there is no clear ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ (or ‘black’ and ‘white’). Rather, the interpretation of events is a matter of narrative and perspective.

So, after deciding on this idea, we started networking and searching for people who grew up in Kosovo, Albania, or Serbia, and who were willing to help us with this project. The interviews had to be conducted online, so this complicated the process a bit. Nevertheless, the responsiveness of AUC-students positively surprised us, as many people offered to share their stories through an interview. By way of seven interviews we collected beautiful, inspiring stories of young people who knew a great deal about the topic. Every person we spoke to was so engaged, kind and well prepared, that we (as interviewers) did not have to do much, apart from listening. It was so interesting to hear the different perspectives of people who are our age, and who were mostly born during this conflict.

After collecting all these stories, Lotte edited the footage (of 7 hours) into a 25-minute film, in which we really tried to capture the sense of hope and identity but also the pain and the suffering that this war has caused. I believe that we could have made a 2-hour film filled with the footage we collected since every single story is so interesting on its own and all of them offer a different insight. 

What this shows, I believe, is that it is not merely a matter of ‘Albanians’ versus ‘Serbians’. Every single person from this region has their own story, and it is impossible to generalize entire groups of people. Of course, there will be shared sentiments, however, just national identity does not define a person; Personal experiences do. That is why our project is called ‘The Colors of Kosovo’; there is no clear division, no clear right and wrong, no clear black and white. Instead, there are many different narratives, emotions, and stories: There are many different colors.