
(It) was reading about these blood feuds that take place in Albania. They’re situations where someone has gotten angry or drunk and killed someone else and then as a result their family technically owes blood; they owe a life. It sounds very simple – it sounds like ‘an eye for an eye’ – but it has its root in a code that goes back hundreds of years and has evolved over time. It’s effectively an oral tradition; it still holds sway in Northern Albania especially. It’s sort of a parallel judicial system. There are a very specific set of rules; what to do if someone is killed, if they’re killed under specific circumstance, if it’s a woman that’s killed, it’s different than if it’s a man. So really the thing that sparked the idea for the movie was not simply these blood feuds, but the question of, ‘What happens to the kids in these situations?Asked about decision to not make this tale melodramatic, he said:
I’m attracted to a realistic form of drama; I’m not interested in histrionics or melodrama or the sense of things being over the top. What I’m interested in is cinema that works in nuance and the smaller gesture, and a realistic performance. For example, the film uses a mixture of formally trained actors and people who never had any experience with acting, ever.But without any sustained tension, the movie’s creeping cruelty feels unmotivated; whenever Marston manages to find the rhythms of film as he does in the climax, still the rest of the movie looks more disjointed. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6zKzDFOwF8[/youtube]
The Forgiveness of Blood – Official Trailer