The Forgiveness of Blood

What a fantastic movie!! Took me while to get onto watching it as I had to be in the mood for sub titles, but boy it was worth it!Was slow at times, but overall a great moving movie.

Fantastic movie! it had me watching it to the very last minute, Subtitles normally annoy me but this movie had the storyline to keep me watching

"The Forgiveness of Blood" follows the lives of two teenagers, the impetuous Nik (Tristan Halilaj) and his more studious sister Rudina (Sindi Lacej). When their father's running disagreement with a neighbour boils over into violence, ending in the neighbour's murder, Nik and Rudina's family become the subject of a blood-feud under the Albanian customary law known as The Kanun. With all the males of the family confined to the house for fear of reprisals, and their father on the run from the police, the tension rapidly begins to tell on Nik and Rudina. For a film that deals with murder, revenge and blood-feuding "The Forgiveness of Blood" is actually not particularly violent. Most of the violence happens off-screen, and is described later, rather than being thrust on the viewer. The result is that the focus is shifted from the adrenalin of being under threat of attack, to the slower and more insidious social consequences of the family's isolation. This is a film less about violence than about its effects. I thought it was a fascinating film. It's set in modern-day Albania, where Facebook and ubiquitous cellphones coexist with horse-drawn wagons and an ancient traditional legal system that runs (at best) in parallel with the courts. If you can handle the slowish pacing, and the fact that it's presented in Albanian with English subtitles (making the quicker parts of dialogue occasionally hard to follow) I'd highly recommend it.

"The Forgiveness of Blood" follows the lives of two teenagers, the impetuous Nik (Tristan Halilaj) and his more studious sister Rudina (Sindi Lacej). When their father's running disagreement with a neighbour boils over into violence, ending in the neighbour's murder, Nik and Rudina's family become the subject of a blood-feud under the Albanian customary law known as The Kanun. With all the males of the family confined to the house for fear of reprisals, and their father on the run from the police, the tension rapidly begins to tell on Nik and Rudina. For a film that deals with murder, revenge and blood-feuding "The Forgiveness of Blood" is actually not particularly violent. Most of the violence happens off-screen, and is described later, rather than being thrust on the viewer. The result is that the focus is shifted from the adrenalin of being under threat of attack, to the slower and more insidious social consequences of the family's isolation. This is a film less about violence than about its effects. I thought it was a fascinating film. It's set in modern-day Albania, where Facebook and ubiquitous cellphones coexist with horse-drawn wagons and an ancient traditional legal system that runs (at best) in parallel with the courts. If you can handle the slowish pacing, and the fact that it's presented in Albanian with English subtitles (making the quicker parts of dialogue occasionally hard to follow) I'd highly recommend it.

I found this a great movie the only negative was having to read all the sub titles but other than that I had to watch it all intensely to see what would happen next. I felt sorry for the children in the family not being able to go to school or do normal childhood activities. Nik finds it very hard when his sister is allowed out to sell bread. But he is confined to the house if he leaves he faces death. Without giving the whole story awy I think that it is a great drama movie worth watching.