Re:Connect 2026: Exploring Identity Through Collaborative Filmmaking - A Kosovo–Swiss youth cooperation project by DokuFest (Kosovo) and Kino Kosova (Switzerland),…
RE:CONNECT 2026
Exploring Identity Through Collaborative Filmmaking
Re:Connect brings young people from Kosovo and Switzerland together through film. It's a project developed by DokuFest and Kino Kosova, built around a two-week documentary filmmaking residency in Prizren. More than anything, it creates a space for young people to meet, work together, and think through questions of identity, belonging, and culture in a way that feels real and shared.
The project is hands-on from the start. Participants work in mixed groups, develop ideas together, shoot, record sound, edit, and shape short documentaries as a team. But what stays with them is not only the practical side of filmmaking. Re:Connect also gives room for conversation, reflection, and exchange. It invites young people to look more closely at democracy, human rights, cultural difference, and what it means to grow up between places, languages, or ways of seeing the world.
What gives the project its strength is the way it combines guidance with freedom. Filmmakers, mentors, and guest speakers are there to support the process, but the participants are the ones carrying it.
The first edition, held in 2025, showed just how much this kind of experience can open up. Young people from Kosovo and Switzerland worked side by side and made three short documentary films touching on memory, migration, family, and belonging. Those films were screened in Bern and are set to be shown at DokuFest as well, giving the work a life beyond the residency and allowing it to reach other audiences too.
The 2026 edition grows out of that first experience. It will bring together 16 young participants between 18 and 25 for another residency in Prizren, with more focus on mentorship, stronger production support, and a wider public reach. The program is open to people from different social, cultural, and educational backgrounds, and no previous filmmaking experience is needed. What matters is interest, openness, and a willingness to work with others.
Reconnect is supported by Movetia and the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of the Swiss Embassy in Kosovo.
"The film school 'Future is Here' at DokuFest has built my skills in using professional editing software. These have helped me to professionally engage at the Media Center of Jacobs University in Germany, where I have been creating multimedia content for scientific communication for the last two years."
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Flutura Balaj, Student, Physics and Earth Sciences, Jacobs University - Bremen, Germany
DokuLab
DokuFest’s educational department DokuLab manages the FilmProduction Centre for Youth and empowers teachers in use of audiovisual tools in classroom in conjunction with traditional methods for deeper understanding of complex issues and promotion of social development of youth.
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