Experimental formally and focused on revealing a subjective psychological truth of the victims of childhood war trauma, Afterwar seeks new forms of expression for the experiences, which are often deemed to be «beyond language,» unnamed, or impossible to convey. Filmed over 15 years, between 2008 and 2023, the film features lots of Gëzim Kelmendi, Xhevahire Abdullahu, Shipresim Azemi, and Besnik Hysen, who have become the film’s co-creators in the process of filmmaking alongside director, Brigitte Staermose. They seamlessly mix actual facts and places with staged scenes filled with the character’s inner dialogue and reflections. The «outside» implicit truth interlaces with attempts at auto-creation and escapist tales of the hurt psyche, which all spawn a convincing, piercing picture of people living through prolonged consequences of the war that caught them at the most vulnerable moment of their lives and psychological development.
On their faces
The characters were around nine years old when they escaped from their homes in various parts of Kosovo due to the Balkan War atrocities. The trauma is clearly visible on their faces, in dilated pupils, a grainy complexion, and limited facial expressions. After the escape, they become children of the streets, earning their food by selling cigarettes, helping at shops, and doing whatever else they can do. They suffer various symptoms of trauma, like heightened vigilance, anxiousness, eating disorders, mood swings, difficulty concentrating, or numbness. Ten years later, as young adults living in Priština, some have slowly moved on, while the others are still at the same point. Some of the earlier symptoms have been eased, but now, depending on the case, they have evolved into characteristics of grown-ups, automatic negative thoughts, nightmares, sleeping difficulties, memory problems, depression, avoidance, self-doubt and low self-esteem, withdrawal or heightened emotionality, trust issues, and relationship problems. They have found different coping mechanisms, like religion, family and children, leaving the country, and art, but they are still afraid and avoid explicit conversations about the events that happened to them.
Afterwar is divided into three chapters – «Past; Present; Future» – as it represents the continuity of the psychological phenomena connected with the war trauma and the emotional states through single words, whispers, close observation of the characters’ faces, and symbolic encounters with family members or others. The characters talk about deprivation, hunger, unemployability, the vicious cycle of low-paying jobs, hopelessness, sadness, and everyday struggle and despair in a low social stratum. The film follows them closely, entirely focused on their point of view, perceiving the changing social reality of Priština through their eyes only. They seem excluded from society, not surrounded by the proper help of elders or social services: «You offer us lives in servitude without a trace of dignity. I am not your servant. You think the war is over. I am just waiting for this ‘afterwar’ to end.» – says Shipresim Azemi in the film’s concluding remarks. They are left by themselves to deal with the pain and troubles on their own.
Ten years later, as young adults living in Priština, some have slowly moved on, while the others are still at the same point.
Biology, psychology, and philosophy
This is much to ask from them. Recent research in biological psychiatry has found that childhood trauma can disrupt and alter the areas of the brain responsible for emotional regulation, memory processing, and stress response (Ireton, Hughes, & Klabunde, 2024). Unless proper, complex pharmaceutical and psychological therapies are implemented, the changes might last a lifetime. The psychological and biological research on trauma is progressing. Although there is still a long road ahead to achieve a level of functional, popular therapies, there are still ways of dealing with the trauma, at least to ease its most painful effects.
Surprisingly, the philosophical reflection on trauma is in its very early stages; still, it brought an overview of its various positions in the work of Hanna Meretoja, who, in her chapter «Philosophies of Trauma» in «The Routledge Companion to Literature and Trauma» (2020) describes three traditions of thought on this subject: empiricism (characteristic for psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience), poststructuralism (connected with the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, and the work of Cathy Caruth and Shoshana Felman) and hermeneutics (stemming from the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl). The poststructuralist approach arises out of the enormous literary and cultural tradition after WW1 and WW2 in that, for it, «trauma is fundamentally unrepresentable, unsayable, and unspeakable—it eludes language, knowledge, and narrative as systems of representation» (Meretoja). Hermeneutics, in contrast, «acknowledge[s] the role of the traumatised subject as a (diagonally / relationally constituted) subject of interpretation and sense-making. They see the subject as not transparent to him or herself but shaped by cultural and social forces that affect the experience of the trauma […]» (ibid). In this approach, a traumatised person might gain an understanding of inner emotions through dialogic and supportive activity with others in society. As Meretoja puts it: «Storytelling is a temporal process that has the potential to transform our conceptual frameworks, even if this potential often remains unrealised.» (ibid).
Trauma crossroads
In this context, Afterwar is an example of work at the crossroads of various ways of thinking about trauma and its long-term consequences. On a level of its characters’ explicit testimonies, it continues the XXth century poststructuralist view of the fundamental inability to narrate the trauma, but, at the same time, through the dialogic, creative process connecting the director with her characters, it attempts to arch over this impossibility formally toward indirect, based on emotions and respect, common therapeutic work of a group of people who talk to each other. This dialogic and democratic process can change views and make one start perceiving oneself in a new light. It can see a traumatised subject slowly opening up, talking about experiences, and learning to accept what happened, which lets one move on with life. Afterwar, in its formal, implicit, indirect, and deeply moving way, mirrors the struggles of a traumatised psyche in search of acceptance and dignity.
