Originally from Kosovo and now living in Switzerland, first time feature filmmaker Fisnik Maxville wrote and directed The Land Within after making a series of trips back and forth to his place of birth over four years.
The Land Within arose from Maxville’s desire to write and direct an original fiction script that begins in Switzerland and unravels in Kosovo. It tells the story of a man who leaves his family in Geneva to travel to the Balkan country to confront the dark secrets of his own past, and his birth country’s difficult recent history.
Maxville developed the project at the Ateliers d’Angers in France in 2019 and got support in Kosovo from Ikone Studio. The project was also selected for the Thessaloniki Film Festival Crossroads co-production forum. Working with the team behind his short film Lost Exile, The Land Within was produced by Swiss based producer Britta Rindelaub, co-produced by Swiss broadcaster RTS’ Benjamin Magnin and Françoise Mayor and Kosovo producer Yll Uka. It was financed in Switzerland in 2020 and started shooting in early 2021.
The Land Within premiered at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in 12, winning the best first feature award and is now screening at the Raindance Film Festival in London.
What appealed to you about this story?
I was born in Kosovo and spent my first 15 years as a refugee in Switzerland, and this has left deep marks in my approach to storytelling. The theme of missing persons is something that is still present in the minds and heart of people in Kosovo and unfortunately, it’s a subject that somehow only keeps growing.
How did you get it made?
From 2016 on, I made two-to-three week trips to Kosovo to really discover my country of origin. I remember meeting hundreds of people in cafés, on the street, in small villages and let them narrate to me their experiences and their souvenirs. That’s how it started and how it developed.
I started casting in Kosovo in 2015, preparing for my first short film Lost Exile, and basically continued doing so all the time. I don’t wait to be in pre-production to cast. If I meet someone that I find interesting for any role — even roles that don’t exist yet — or if I see someone in another film, I will always want to meet them. When we preparing to shoot The Land Within, I had about 100 casting videos with actors and actresses in Kosovo. I am truly impressed by the diversity and quality of actors in Kosovo, there is a true hunger to show themselves to the world, a will to embody stories in such a visceral way that it makes a director’s work much easier.
Where did the shoot take place?
We found a small village called Sllakovc in the north-eastern part of Kosovo. There, we also had the chance to hire pretty much half of the village’s population to work with us, be it on the production side or as extras during crowded scenes. The shoot there lasted for around 28 days, then [we had] about seven more days of shooting, in a forest nearby and the rest in Switzerland.
What was your most memorable moment?
We had a whole night shoot with half-breed wolves. In the scene, they have an interaction with Luàna [Bajrami, the lead actor] and this was her last day of shooting. I remember that the whole team was impressed and close to tears when we were seeing her performance on the monitors. At the end of the night, she confessed she was terrified of dogs, so her whole performance during the whole night of shooting had not been acting, but simply fear.
What are you working on now?
I have been developing a new feature film and a documentary for the last year; both have to do with the relationship of one’s image on the internet (especially on apps such as and similar to OnlyFans). In a way, it’s a study on the question of ‘is digital life real?’
Who would you like to collaborate with in the future?
Working in a small and quite conservative industry such as Switzerland has given me the will to go beyond it: I am looking to blend genres in a single film, just like Jordan Peele or Jonathan Glazer have done. I am hoping one day to have a script good — or weird —-enough to draw interest from production companies such as FilmNation or A24.
