At one point it seemed to me that this stylized drama filmed in a French-Kosovo production was a kind of variation on the theme of “Spring Breakers” by Harmony Korine. A poetic crime drama about girls who will engage in criminal activities partly out of boredom and boredom, but the reasons, cause and motive for Jeta, Qe and Li, i.e. the lionesses, will be significantly different from the one Candy, Faith, Brit and Cotty had in Korine’s film. There is another link between these two films, and that is the fact that the director of “The Hill Where Lionesses Roar” Luana Bajrami had just turned 20 when her film was screened at Cannes, while Korine was 21 when he wrote the script for Larry Clark’s “Kids”.
And it was the first film for Bajrami, who played the supporting role of Lena, a girl who lives in Paris, and who arrived in Kosovo during the summer to visit her grandparents. Three best and inseparable friends live in a sleepy Kosovo village located somewhere in the hills. They are waiting for the university enrollment results and hope that they will soon leave the place that seems to be holding them back, suffocating them. And while they wait, time passes so slowly as they drag themselves through the village, from the never-finished multi-storey house that is their hideout, over the empty and neglected swimming pool to the hill where they decided to form a gang and start stealing.
It is completely clear to us that none of the three of them is enthusiastic about the roles and lives that seem to be predestined for them in that patriarchal, primitive environment and they are waiting for something to happen. An important role is played by the environment itself, which seems to suffocate them, restrain them and from which they want to escape, so we also have many shots of a mostly desolate and quiet nature, which seems to contrast their wild and restless spirit. She filmed young Bajrami, who, like her character in the film, moved to France as a child from Kosovo and started acting in films and series there as a child, a poetic, stylized, highly aestheticized drama, which is carried by convincing performances by three girls, two blondes and a brunette. embodied by Qe, Li and Jeta.
Flaka Latifi, Era Balaj and Urate Shabani were jointly awarded the Heart of Sarajevo at the SFF in the category of best actress for their performances, and besides “The Hill Where Lionesses Roar” is a stylized and poetic drama with crime elements, it is also a strong social critique .Society which, as we could see in another recent Kosovo success film “Košnica”, is still very patriarchal, closed, quite primitive, at least when it comes to those rural areas and a society in which women still do not have the freedom and rights as in But these three somewhat wild, free-spirited girls will decide to rebel against it and go their own way.