This is a policy brief about Kosovo’s cinema: (1) how it represents Kosovarness
through a selected corpus of films launched between 2017 and 2021, and (2) how
Kosovo’s stories help the country promote its soft power overseas while also catalyzing internal social debates. Overall, authors of this study have analyzed almost ten hours of films and interviewed four filmmakers and one film producer. Their theoretical and methodological foundations lie on a combination of Erwing Goffman’s theory of symbolic interactionism with Algirdas J. Greimas’ generative semiotics. They have also relied on the term “soft power”, coined by Joseph Nye, to describe a form of influence that relies on attraction and persuasion rather than coercion or payment.
