July 16, 2026
For many young people growing up between Kosovo and Switzerland, identity is rarely something fixed. It shifts with language, family stories, geography, and the quiet expectations that come with moving between cultures. Some inherit memories of places they have never lived. Others know Kosovo only through summer visits or stories told around the dinner table. And some arrive with no personal connection at all, curious about a country they have only encountered through the people around them.
Re:Connect was built around that reality.
Developed by DokuFest and Kino Kosova, with the support of Movetia and the Swiss Embassy in Kosovo, the programme brought together young people from Kosovo and Switzerland, including participants from the Kosovar diaspora as well as Swiss participants with different cultural backgrounds. Through workshops, mentorship and collaborative filmmaking, they were encouraged not to explain who they were, but to explore it through creative filmmaking.
According to the mentor Samir Karahoda, "What was most valuable about Reconnect was seeing how the participants used filmmaking not to define identity, but to question it. They began with personal memories, family histories and different relationships to Kosovo, but through discussions, lectures, research and collaboration, these stories opened into something more universal, which had been our aim from the very beginning."
The eleven films produced across the programme's two editions don't offer one answer to questions of identity or belonging. Instead, they circle around family memories, migration, home, absence and the ties that connect generations. Grandparents become storytellers, family archives open forgotten conversations, and familiar places are seen through new eyes. Together, the films show that the most personal stories often speak to something much larger.
"What connects these films isn't a shared style or subject. It's curiosity," says mentor Eroll Bilibani. "You can't really teach that in a classroom. It grows through working together, spending time together, questioning each other's ideas, and slowly realising that someone else's story can change the way you understand your own."
That exchange worked in every direction. Participants from Kosovo encountered young people whose connection to the country had been shaped by distance and memory, while participants from Switzerland discovered Kosovo through lived experience rather than inherited narratives or headlines. The mix of backgrounds made the conversations richer and reminded everyone that cultural exchange becomes more meaningful when it includes different perspectives, not only shared origins.
Sabahet Meta from KinoKosova in Switerland notes that “Re-Connect tapped into a voice that was yearning to be heard. When young people are empowered to tell their own stories, they do more than document the world around them. They shape it with courage, creativity, and hope. Through collaborative filmmaking, individual experiences evolved into a collective voice, helping capture and better understand the realities, inherited narratives, questions, and aspirations of a generation navigating an increasingly complex world. Perhaps the growing complexities and challenges of our world stem from the absence of more initiatives like Re-Connect.”
Looking back at both editions, perhaps the programme's biggest achievement isn't only the films themselves. It's the confidence that young filmmakers found in telling stories that felt personal, the friendships and creative partnerships that crossed borders, and the understanding that identity doesn't need to be neatly defined to be worth exploring.
RE:CONNECT 2026 - Exploring Identity Through Collaborative Filmmaking is supported by Movetia and the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of the Swiss Embassy in Kosovo.
Find here all films screening as part of Re:Connect 2
