The new documentary from Berlinale-winning filmmaker Birgitte Stærmose, Afterwar, is set to have its North American premiere at the 15th DOC NYC in the Kaleidoscope Competition Section on Saturday, November 16th.

Filmed over the course of 15 years, the documentary blends raw realism and staged performance to create a powerful meditation on the long-term repercussions of war from the eyes of the subjects who lives the reality of post-war Kosovo.

The official synopsis of the film reads: Burning buildings in a dense fog, a dead horse on a dusty road, people fleeing through harsh mountain landscapes. Afterwar opens with images from war-torn Kosovo, 1999, as a dark chapter in the history of modern Europe draws to a close. After the war, children sell peanuts and cigarettes on the streets of Pristina in order to survive. They speak to us: ‘There’s only one reason I’m talking to you. It is my hunger! I’m so hungry, I could eat your money!’ In a cinematic testament co-created over 15 years, they transform into adults before our eyes. Yet the child still stares back at us from behind the adult gaze, as the struggle to survive becomes a struggle for a future at all. They confront us with their innermost secrets and desires, while stuck in limbo and haunted by their past. Through a close artistic collaboration with the lead cast – Xhevahire, Gëzim, Shpresim, and Besnik – the film moves between raw realism, staged performance, and an existential meditation on the long-term repercussions of war. Any war, anywhere.

“We are continually being met with a media that describes war as a dramatic moment in time. The headline on the evening news is about the most recent bombing or the casualty count. We think of war as something that happens, and then it is over. But the war lives on in the people who experienced it. I am still grappling with the enormity of this,” says director Birgitte Stærmose about the film. “In Afterwar, I want the audience to be confronted by this as well. When meeting people who suffer more than we do, we often use pity to get past our own discomfort. If we feel sorry for another person, we feel that we have done our part. I have made a film that does not allow this easy way out. I have been profoundly changed by the encounter with the cast, and similarly, I would like the audience to leave the cinema unable to forget about their destinies. The form and approach of the film grew out of a need to protect the children who were the subjects of the film, and their stories were fictionalized. In the process I developed a language that was a form of heightened reality, a collective testimony, which created an opportunity to tell intimately and emotionally, without revealing the actual private facts of their lives.”

Stærmose originally met the subjects of the documentary back in 2008, when they were kids selling cigarettes on the street. She returned in 2018 to film for another 5 years to capture their lives as adults.

Afterwar had its world premiere earlier this year at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival where it was nominated for the Documentary Award and the Panorama Audience Award. The film had its Kosovan premiere at the Dokufest on August 5, 2024.

Watch the official trailer for Afterwar.