Flora Brovina

Pristina | Date: June 26, 27 and August 12, 2018 | Duration: 532 minutes

My little sister was small when we visited our father in Peja. In Peja’s prison, which was filled with Albanian prisoners. Why do I know this? As a child, well I was quite little myself, I wasn’t going to school yet. I know because in front of the prison all the families that came to visit the prisoners gathered and had a bag in their hand {makes a move to describe the bag}.

[…] But these miseries that childhood carries will follow us throughout life because childhood [experiences] leave a trace. Luckily it did not fill me with hatred and I like that oblivion did not take over. I remember them because I never took them as personal, but I believe I share them with all the people who waited to visit theirs in prison. I share them with all the people who have been excommunicated, politically persecuted families, excommunicated by the society, a time when your neighbors did not pay you a visit because they were afraid.


Aurela Kadriu (Interviewer), Donjetë Berisha (Camera)

Flora Brovina was born in 1949 in Skenderaj, Kosovo. She is a Kosovar Albanian poet, pediatrician and women’s rights activist. Brovina was raised in Pristina, then went to school to study pediatric medicine in Zagreb. After finishing her university studies, she returned to Kosovo and worked as a journalist for the Albanian daily newspaper, Rilindja. Soon thereafter, she returned to the healthcare profession working for many years in the Pediatric Unit of the Pristina General Hospital. Currently, Brovina is a member of the Kosovo Parliament and lives with her family in Pristina.