“Will it be okay if I don’t sleep at night?” In the second half of Kosovan director Visar Molina’s new film Shame and Money, an employer offers a candidate a job as a junior security guard. This question simply refers to the antisocial hours of the job, but it’s a question that the various characters in this stoic, slow-cutting look at the economic despair and exploitation of modern Europe bear asking for different reasons. Middle-aged Shaban (Astrit Kabashi), who is broke and anxiously navigating the urban menial labor market after having to give up his family farm, lies awake most nights, whether he is working or not. Meanwhile, those higher up the capitalist food chain are probably not tossing and turning as much as they should.
Molina’s third feature, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance’s World Film Competition, finds him returning his focus to his homeland after his second film, 2020’s Exile, which also premiered at Sundance, was an excellent, poignantly comic portrayal of the Kosovan immigrant experience in modern-day Germany. Considered and painfully sober, Shame and Money is noticeably lacking in humor, once again examining social outsider status, but this time with wealth and class (genetic or suddenly acquired) as dividing barriers. His latest work is a slow burn that offers little hope or levity, but Molina doesn’t substitute monotonous misery either. The intricately observed dynamics within the family keep the drama textured and human, as does Kabashi’s delicately layered performance as a man who is both gently beaten down and screaming inside.
The rather long first act, set in a dusty rural village not far from Kosovo’s capital Pristina, introduces a number of thorny tensions and conflicts in the extended family of dairy farmer Shaban, his wife Hatice (Fronja Koderi), and their three young daughters, well before the exciting setback that moves the action to the city. Shaban and Hatishe are living a simple but steady life with their mother Nana (Kumlije Hoksa) carefully managing the household finances, but Shaban’s irresponsible and work-hating younger brother Liridon (Tristan Hariraj) is in dire need of cash. The third brother, the short-tempered Agim (Abdinasser Beka), does not help, but Shaban is more easily marked. And when Liridon takes off without warning or reward, the family falls into dire financial straits.
When the farm suddenly becomes unsustainable, he has no choice but to pack up and look for work in Pristina. Hatishe’s younger sister Lina (Fiona Gravica) is living a comfortable life with no money in a spacious and shiny new house, courtesy of her husband Alban (Alban Ukaj), an entrepreneur. Alban isn’t one for giving, but he offers his country-minded in-laws part-time employment as a cleaner at his nightclub. This is a rather high-handed treatment of family and relatives, and is reflected in Lina’s awkward domestic arrangements. Lina works for a small allowance to care for Alban’s sick and disabled father (Selman Rokaj). Even when they get married, they seem to be reminded of their true place on the social ladder.
The work Albán offers is not enough for the couple to make a living, especially in an emerging urban economy where everything from renting an apartment to making bank withdrawals has hidden costs. However, their attempts to find additional employment are often thwarted. They include Alban and Lina, who believe it would be embarrassing for the family to see Shaban as a day laborer, and repeatedly instruct him to polish up his non-existent resume instead. Hatishe sharply reminds Lina that shame is a luxury that most people cannot feel, but she is equally anxious about accepting money and gifts when her sister offers them. Molina’s complex screenplay has little interest in moral binaries and tends to leave politics unsaid. Instead, we look closely at how each character identifies the exact level of personal corruption that they feel allows them to function in a society built on the bottom.
Occasionally, high-pitched folk songs punctuate the film’s muffled, throbbing soundtrack. This bitterly represents to the characters and audience alike the simpler, more rustic way of life they were forced to leave behind. Janis Mazuch’s cinematography, which often favors intimate and unnerving tracking shots, is fluid and unobtrusive, except for a showpiece shot that revolves around a raucous music gathering in Pristina’s town center square. There, the camera passively watches the hustle and bustle of the city from on high, circling around a surreal landmark, the statue of Bill Clinton. For those willing to look up and realize it, it will be a quaint memory of a time when the future and the Western economic ideals of Eastern Europe looked very different from today’s cynical struggle for survival.
