Why Us?
Ryan Johnson - Director/Cinematographer
I am an American director and cinematographer whose work bridges documentary realism with painterly visual composition. My background in fine-art photography and filmmaking spans more than fifteen years across San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Milan—exploring themes of memory, identity, and the human relationship to place. My visual language is rooted in simplicity, emotional resonance, and the search for truth through image.
The path to The Silent Country began through my marriage to Liljana Xheka, who was born in an internment camp under Albania’s communist regime. Hearing her family’s story—and later visiting those sites together with our children—transformed the way I understood history and the role of cinema in preserving it. What began as a personal awakening became a shared creative mission: to give voice and visibility to those who were silenced, and to confront the quiet erasure of Albania’s past.
As co-director and cinematographer of The Silent Country, I bring a cinematic approach shaped by years of work in fine-art and commercial production—merging technical precision with an emotional awareness developed through collaboration with survivors and their families. My goal has been to create a film where beauty and truth coexist, where the landscape itself bears witness to memory.
Our project represents both a partnership and a family journey. It is a film born from love, history, and the shared conviction that storytelling—when done with care—can become an act of remembrance.
Liljana Xheka - Producer
I was born in an internment camp in Albania, the child of a family persecuted under the communist regime. My earliest memories were shaped by silence — by parents who carried the weight of forced labor and loss. Growing up, I learned how easily truth can disappear when it isn’t protected, and how entire generations can be taught to forget.
After leaving Albania, I built a career in international finance — first at Citigroup, later as Executive Director at Moelis & Company in San Francisco — advising global technology companies on mergers, acquisitions, and capital strategy. That work taught me structure, leadership, and how to move complex ideas into reality.
But a return visit to Kampi Tepelenës changed everything. Standing where thousands of women and children once suffered, including families like mine, I realized how little had been done to preserve their voices. As a mother of three, I could no longer see this history as distant. The Silent Country was born from that moment — a desire to capture the testimonies of survivors before they vanish and to confront the silence that has defined Albania for decades.