Doruntina Basha wins the first EWA Network Female Voices Award at TFL
Ewa Network is delighted with this opportunity facilitated by Torino Film Lab to celebrate and support female writing talent.
Before presenting the Female Voices Award, EWA Network Director of Programmes, Alexia Muiños Ruiz, addressed to the large industry audience at Torino Film Meeting, mentioning the pay gap female authors suffer, according to FERA's report it is 80% of the average pay a male writer receives. Women represent ony 25% of the film writers and are less likely to be the sole writers for the project. In 67% of the films written by a female author, there's another writer, usually a man. Not to mention the Oscars, where in 95 years only fifteen women won the accolade either for original or adapted screenplay. Hence the dire need to acknowledge and support female writing talent now.
EWA Network is proud to present the FEMALE VOICES AWARD to a project dealing with the clash of classes, the mirage of friendship and bling bling. A project that invites us to reflect on how women are perceived and how they would love to be. With subtle yet intense dramatic arc and resilient characters. Bold enough to put in the spotlight one of our tabooes, menopause and middle aged women. To Doruntina Basha, writer of Bleach.
Doruntina is a playwright and screenwriter. She studied Playwriting at the University of Prishtina and holds an MA in European Humanities. She spent a decade working in the creative industry in her hometown.
Her first feature screenplay Vera Dreams of the Sea was made into a film by Kaltrina Krasniqi. It premiered in the Orizzonti section of the 78th Venice International Film Festival. She works in her home country, as well as internationally, in theater, film and communication.
BLEACH Synopsis and Intention
In an advertising agency in downtown Prishtina, 20 female cleaners are sitting in a focus group, sharing thoughts on a new bleach product the agency is branding. Fatime, a domestic worker from Prishtina outskirts, shares a personal story, which draws the attention of Elvira, the charismatic head of the agency. She offers her a job as a cleaner at the firm. Fatime has been waiting for this offer for years. She has
grown emotionally exhausted by contract-less work in other people’s homes, cleaning or nannying their children. So she eagerly accepts. One thing leads to another, and Fatime is at a luxury private residence on the Albanian coast, changing bandages on Elvira’s body recovering from liposuction. Elvira is adamant: nobody must know. Fatime is loyal. She doesn’t even tell her family. Having a powerful, successful woman dependent on her caring touch, instills in her a devotion she feels only for her closest friends. Unaware, she crosses a line.
An incident tarnishes this newfound friendship so badly that Fatime, the believer of cleanliness, the expert stain remover, cannot seem to know how to bleach out. Her truth is simply not a valid currency in a world where what she perceives as a friendship is just an illusion created by manipulative dynamics of social class.
Director's note
Becoming a mother taught me that if I wanted to make films I needed a substitute. Having a nanny granted me a front seat to the lives of women who step in for you, and by doing so risk systematic exploitation. Because after all, they are contract-less workers serving within your confined private life.
Bleach is an intimate drama focused on two very different women who are unlikely to meet in any other circumstance but the one where services are provided and purchased. However, a sudden bond paints a dual gaze which examines women’s dynamic when they feel unwatched. Fatime and Elvira engage in a complex interaction shaped by class, power and tension
EWA members awarded in Torino Film Lab Meeting Event
Greek producer Fani Skartouli received two awards for her upcoming project PLAN B, to be directed by Konstantinos Antonopoulos
North Macedonian producer Elena Stanisheva received an award for her debut feature film Sweet Bitterness of Ripe Pomegranates, project developed at Torino Script Lab and supported by North Macedonian FIlm Agency
