"The three films in this Chicago International Film Festival dispatch take the form's ability to heart in a bid to preserve the memories of a Kosovo village, the legacy of a disgraced Ghanaian president, and an area of Italy previously wiped out by a volcano. These films, to varying degrees of success, stand as a testament to the importance of remembrance, even when the memories hurt."
"Swiss-Albanian director Dea Gjinovci's elegiac documentary " The Beauty of the Donkey " is a fine addition to that trend. It concerns the filmmaker's father, who returns to his small village in Kosovo with his daughter for the first time in nearly 60 years. While there, her father, Asllan, shares memories that Gjinovci decides to stage as abstract theatrical productions, bringing the past back to modernity with potency."
Documentary filmmaking functions as an act of remembrance that seeks to capture moments, people, and places before time erases them. Three films highlighted preserve memories of a Kosovo village, the legacy of a disgraced Ghanaian president, and an Italian region destroyed by a volcano. Dea Gjinovci's The Beauty of the Donkey follows her father Asllan's return to his village after nearly sixty years and stages his recollections as abstract theatrical pieces. The film intertwines personal loss and political exile, recounting oppression under Serbian authorities, the ruptured family ties, and the unresolved questions surrounding Asllan's mother's death.
Read at Roger Ebert
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