Cannes 2026: Dua, Flesh and Fuel, Six Months in a Pink and Blue Building

A fraught coming-of-age story is set in late-1990s Pristina, Kosovo, during Serbian violence as a country falls apart. Dua, a 13-year-old Albanian girl, experiences teenage angst alongside cultural mourning. The film begins with a cheeky slow dance that is interrupted by police, scattering the teens and letting discrimination emerge without immediate explanation. Dua lives with an older brother and sister, an unemployed mother and father, and a household dependent on odd jobs and government assistance. She has few friends and faces attacks by Serbian hooligans and sexual assault by an older neighborhood Serbian man. A classmate refugee inspires her to take up judo, building confidence to seek tools to defend herself.

"A fraught coming-of-age story set in Pristina, Kosovo, in the late 1990s, Blerta Basholli's " Dua " cleverly navigates the tragedy of watching your country fall apart just as you're coming into your own. Dua (Pinea Matoshi), a 13-year-old Albanian girl, is at the center of a maelstrom of teenage angst and cultural mourning experienced under Serbian violence."

"Basholi, the filmmaker behind Kosovo's 94th Academy Award submission " Hive," smartly, however, doesn't immediately dive into the oncoming turmoil. She opens quite cheekily with a teenage slow dance between Dua and another boy, set to Seal's "Kiss From a Rose." That party is broken up by the police, causing these kids to scatter through the streets like punk rockers rebelling against the man. Why are these cops pursuing these young teens so fervently? Basholi doesn't immediately answer that question. Instead, she allows the world's discrimination to surface organically."

"Dua, we find, lives with an older brother and sister, her unemployed mother and father, in a household that requires odd jobs and government assistance to make ends meet. She has few friends, which makes her vulnerable against a local band of attacking Serbian hooligans and the sexual assault by an older, neighborhood Serbian man, which will eventually cause her to search for tools to defend herself. Her classmate Maki (Vlera Bilalli), a refugee from another country, inspires Dua to take up Judo, a sport that gives her some self-confidence to seek reven"

Read at Roger Ebert