47 years after the rupture between Albania and China, a young Chinese filmmaker returns to Tirana in place of his grandfather. Alongside three Albanian students, he pieces together the turbulent global picture of the Cold War using old photographs, poetry, and an uneasy future.

 

    Since the deaths of Mao and Hoxha, China and Albania have reshaped their socialist foundations into shifting economic and ideological hybrids. Every city conceals desires and fears like dreams.1 Blues in Tirana interprets the lingering summer blues as both political aftershock and youthful restlessness, rippling across nations and generations. Blending documentary texture with scripted reverie, the film adopts a coming-of-age gaze to track post-socialist tremors and to explore how we inhabit an interconnected world while imagining the next step of history.

​

​

​

1 Calvino, Italo. (1972). Invisible Cities. Translated by William Weaver. Random House.