Edon Rizvanolli

Edon Rizvanolli is an actor and filmmaker from Kosovo who fled his home country when the war broke out. He settled in Austria and started his acting career in Salzburg 1992. Four years later he moved to New York and entered the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute to study acting. On return to Vienna in 1998, he directed his first short film and wrote two screenplays financed by the Austrian Film Commission. Concurrently he was employed as a theatre actor and a radio program maker/presenter for the Austrian Broadcast Corporation.
In 1999 Edon returned to Kosovo and worked as a director, writer and editor on various projects ranging from music videos to documentaries and feature films. Since 2007 he lived in Amsterdam working as an actor and director. UNWANTED, written and directed in 2017, was his feature debut and had its world premiere in Karlovy Vary. It was Kosovo’s 2018 Oscar nominee and travelled to numerous festivals worldwide, winning several prizes. He is currently in the preproduction phase for his second feature film. Edon is a member of the European Film Academy.

Adrift

LIM | Less is More 2022

Bekim, a soft-spoken and introverted middle-aged man from Albania, lives with his wife Karin and their son Noar in a small coastal town in Holland. In his youth, Bekim dreamt of becoming a rockstar but ended up maintaining wind turbines instead. And now, after thirty years of marriage with Karin, he is to spend one last day with her. She is terminally ill and will be euthanised. He tries to comfort his son and help Karin as well. He carries her frail body around the house and puts on her makeup while she dictates a list of things he needs to do once she is dead. In the weeks following her death, Bekim continues with his life feeling sad, empty and adrift. Until he realises that the life he has lived wasn’t his but hers. This shocking realisation is followed by a sensation of long-forgotten freedom. Bekim visits family and friends in Albania and rediscovers scattered bits of his old self. He returns to Holland to find and redefine himself.