Displaced

Sami Karahoda's film starts in a garage. Through the window they could almost be dancing, a back and forth whose rhythm on closer inspection is that of a bouncing ball rather than banging beat. With scarcely room to move on any side the table from which this tennis takes its name sits. It will need to be moved.

Shot in proportions that seem taller than they are wide, the hills of Kosovo loom and also by implication. Jeton Mazreku and Ermegan Kazazi are here recreating what is in part their own true story. The movement of an effort to keep a sport alive. These are striking surrounds. Not just the sunshine of south-eastern Europe or the northern Mediterranean or the hill-hidden sunsets of the mountains, the human geographies. Walls white-washed, dancefloors reflecting the chandeliers and murals of traditional dance above. The blue of still palleted stock contrasts with deeper blues of tracksuits, of tables, those plentiful ping pongs parallel to products of Pepsico. "How can one leave Germany for this place?" through a doorway made in a wall. Discussions of boundaries and deportations across thresholds, the hollow-eyed house behind without windows or soul.

Sophisticated visuals, the frame of the table on the back of a trailer, a symbolic monolith dragged by tractor to the top of yet another hill. These moments of stillness stark contrast to the energy of the players, young arms exploding out as whole bodies connect to impart speed and spin to those small spheres. Everywhere the "best team in Kosovo" goes, obstacles. Not just the ever changing locks, the shadows, the melancholy of a basement bar. Through the snow, across the churchyards, in the distant corners of huge halls.

It closes with the title, Pa Vend, translated as 'Displaced' but literally 'No Room'. That distinction perhaps more important than my usual complaints about title because the absence of a thing is different than the movement of a thing. The film won at Sundance in a documentary category but it is a constructed story, a recreation of, if not fact, then feeling. Memil Kelmindi's sound and music work to build a sense of both cinematic remove and documentary proximity, the echoing bounce of a table tennis ball is at once real and evidently artificial and that depth reverberates through more deliberate compositions.

In a pre-recorded Q&A at 2022's Glasgow Short Film Festival, Karahoda talked about "trying to steal as much as possible" from their stories. He took "the most important things" and from them created dialogues, using that as a way to "sensitise the topics". "Simple but with messages inside", and that is certainly an apt description of the film. It is a fascinating piece, beautifully constructed and observed. With a non-professional cast the proximity of the story to reality helps what is perhaps performance, but the depth of having an inability to travel become the thing that travels is compelling. The sparseness here is not for a lack of quality or effort, that old saw about jazz being in the notes you don't play, the flourish of constraint. Table tennis might have a small footprint but when they talk about the hope of attending the Japanese championships one is minded of the haiku. In Winter's white weight even the lightest burden can be lost to sight.

There was discussion of the aspect ratio, Karahoda talked about envisioning the film as square. A desire to get "as close as possible" to the singular focus on the faces of the players, a mixture of close-up and portraiture. There is also though a metaphoric weight to these "small strange places", the lack of space the imposition of borders. It is square, one by one, but so often the movement makes it narrower, the edge of claustrophobia. For Kosovo, a place at once so small and so large that in the city 90% of the town did not know of the club with its international aspirations, there have been victories. Seen not just by the Prime Minister at its premiere at Cannes, other members of cabinet have seen it and from it have taken action. Having one 32 of 32 matches on the road as guests the club will now have a home of its own. There are many plaudits available to film but few can match the satisfaction of actual change.

While 'Displaced' works as a title, 'No Room' evokes another tale of travellers looking for somewhere to stay. Here the rewards of faith are perhaps smaller, but no less satisfying as a story.