Kenedi Goes Back Home (2003)

The first film in what would ultimately become Zilnik’s famed Kenedi trilogy follows street hustler Kenedi Hasani and his friend as they roam the streets of Serbia seeking Kenedi’s parents. Kenedi Goes Back Home is Zilnik’s account of the Roma people who were forced to flee from the war in the Balkans to Germany in the 1990s and who, ten years later, are forced against their will to return to Serbia. Zilnik shows the immigrants' lives in relation to the prevailing ideology shaped today by the borders between rich and poor and by the often-racist selection process that determines who will be accepted into Western Europe. In presenting the dilemmas and identifying the crises these people face, he appeals for a solution.