Stoimenov thinks there is something telling in the audience’s favorite characters. “Out of all the characters in Besa, you know, the audience loves Dardan the most. You know why that is? Because he is a traditional guy, he still thinks traditionally. That’s the way they connected to Teuta, to Gresa’s character too.” It’s not that they see the traditionalism of Dardan and Teuta as representing Albanians, rather, they see the Berishas’ code of honor, their emphasis on keeping their word and their willingness to sacrifice for their family as things they value in their own lives.

“Besa shows a parallel world,” Abazi said, “it shows some values that have been forgotten, and that hits people.”

Bajraktaraj was more circumspect about whether the show could overcome long-embedded prejudices but he saw positive signs in the audience’s response.

“Reinforcing stereotypes? I don’t know. I have so many letters, mostly written by women,” he said, “where they say precisely the contrary. For the first time they are looking at Albanians differently, and that was perhaps the essence of the challenge. How although there are stereotypes, what if I accept them and just give them back to you, so you can have your proper feeling of: Are they really like this?”

Early in the second season, when Petrit travels to Estonia after Uroš’s family is killed, an Estonian police officer asks what happened to Uroš back in the Balkans.

“He’s an ordinary man who notorious criminals turned into a beast,” Petrit says. He might as well have been talking about himself, or Dardan, or any number of characters in the show. In Besa, characters’ fates aren’t decided by the gods, as in Greek tragedy. By chance and by circumstance, they are forced into roles they must act out, often to their own doom.

“Uroš turned into a beast because, in a way, it’s also the story of the Balkans,” Bajraktaraj said, “the recent story of the Balkans. People becoming beasts, because of the background of what was happening. That’s perhaps why people are identifying themselves with the characters. We are touching on something beyond a simple crime series.”

***

In the last few years, films from the post-Yugoslav space have punched well above their weight-class. In 2022 the Kosovar film “Hive” made it onto the shortlist for the Oscars in the Best International Feature category, in 2021 the Bosnian film “Quo Vadis, Aida?” was nominated in the same category and in 2020 the Macedonian film Honeyland was nominated both for Best Documentary and Best International Feature. There’s no debate that the region has world-class actors, directors and cinematographers.

The question the series Besa implicitly asks is: “If our films can perform at a world-class level, why can’t our TV shows too?” There’s no reason why Balkan noir, if created with the creative and financial resources of a team of countries, can’t hit the highest levels of prestige TV and bring regional stories to global audiences.

Besa isn’t quite at the level yet. As one Serbian critic put it in an overall positive review of the series, viewers who are familiar with top-level prestige TV will “relatively quickly notice beginner’s steps, beginner’s flaws,” plot holes, minor script issues, continuity questions. On top of that, a viewer who doesn’t know better might assume after watching Besa that Albanians hand out two or three binding blood oaths before they get out of bed in the morning. But the series is a start.

“I really believe that this Balkan area, which is for all mainstream media in the West the worst area of Europe, is actually the perfect place for great stories,” Stoimenov said. “And these stories are not just Serbian, Albanian or Montenegrin stories. They are our stories.”

Though Hamiti had his doubts about Besa at first (it took two years before Klan Kosova agreed to purchase broadcast rights), in the end he concluded, “that art, no matter what the situation is, if things are treated in a decent way, can be shown in both Kosovo and Serbia.”

When thinking about Kosovo, Serbia, the Balkans and cinema, the great Yugoslav Albanian actors come to mind (the majority of the Albanian-language press coverage of Besa is clickbait articles asking whether Florist Bajgora is the new Bekim Fehmiu).

Near the end of our Zoom conversation, Bajraktaraj also reflected on their work. What would they think of Besa? “All those [Albanian] actors who were in Belgrade, it would be interesting to me to have their opinions, but now they’ve mostly died. Faruk, Bekim…” he trailed off. “But I think probably they would be happy. I don’t know about the series itself, that they would be happy with the subject matter, but they would be happy with the way it was received. I would like to believe that. At least we tried.”

Feature image: Arrita Katona / K2.0.

This article has been produced with the financial support of the “Balkan Trust for Democracy,” a project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Balkan Trust for Democracy, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, or its partners.

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'Besa' - A bid at Balkan Noir

Serbian series about Albanian mobsters finds audiences in Prishtina and Belgrade.

Daniel Petrick

'Besa' - A bid at Balkan Noir

Serbian series about Albanian mobsters finds audiences in Prishtina and Belgrade.

Daniel Petrick