Open Door is a film about human relationships and the burden of society’s customs and traditions. How to find decency in a patriarchal society where it depends on traditional values and not on the real values of human relationships, tends to be my premise.

The story of Open Door follows two sisters, Rudina and Elma, who are unable to go to their father’s home owing to the fact that the younger of the two, Elma, returns from abroad pregnant and unmarried.

As a younger filmmaker coming from a certain generation, I feel tremendous empathy and fascination for these characters. I find myself particularly drawn to this confrontation between the traditional values of our parents and real human values. Perhaps this is the one thing ideology has not been able to impact: the very specific nature of the Albanian family. The characteristics of these clans are often marked by an extremely stubborn and serious father, a long-suffering, hard working mother, and children who attempt to live their own lives but feel they must please their parents.

For me as a director, the inner workings and dynamics inside families, Albanian and otherwise, are the compelling material of which great cinema is made. The sisters in my story go to ridiculous lengths to please their father by producing a pretend husband for his benefit; a length that puts their lives in danger.

For me, this absurdity perfectly captures the awful, tragic and sometimes humorous social landscape that marks Albania in the past twenty years.