The Silent Country
a film by Ryan Johnson
Where silence endures, memory becomes resistance.
For nearly half a century, Albania was among the most isolated and brutal communist states. Under Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship, thousands were executed, tens of thousands imprisoned, and families—including women, children, and the elderly were interned in barbed-wire camps such as Tepelenë, Porto Palermo, and Berat. Their crime? Simply, existing with the "wrong" lineage.
This is their story
In postwar Europe, only Albania built a concentration camp for it’s own children…
Hidden in the hills of Tepelenë, thousands of women and children were imprisoned by Albania’s communist regime — starved, silenced, and forgotten as the world looked away. Today, the site lies in ruins, overgrown and unmarked.
The Silent Country follows survivors who return to this landscape of absence, searching for traces of their childhood and the graves of those who never left.
Simon Mirakaj
Survivor of Kampi Tepelenë — born in prison, interned for 45 years
“The children’s voices reverberated through the barracks
‘Mother, I’m hungry!’ they cried.
The mothers had nothing to give them but their tears.
Eventually, the children would fall asleep,
exhausted from hunger.”
“I remember how my father told me the day he left, “You are the oldest at thirteen. Elmija is twelve, Shemsadin is nine. You are the mother of these children now. If I leave your mother here they will intern all of you. You are children so they wouldn’t dare intern you alone.”
But we were interned… ”
— Mine Balaj
“I was born in an internment camp in Albania, into a family branded as “enemies of the people.” My earliest memories were shaped not by toys or books, but by whispers and fragments of stories about a past my parents could not speak of freely. Growing up, the silence surrounding those years became its own form of inheritance. Like many children of the persecuted, I learned that memory was dangerous, and survival meant forgetting. Yet that silence lived deep inside our bodies, in our fears, and in our hesitations.”
— Liljana Xheka - Producer of The Silent Country
Through testimonies of survivors, rare archival documents, and a poetic cinematic language, The Silent Country seeks to establish a memorial in cinema where no national monument yet exists.
