Belgian playwright and poet Maurice Maeterlinck said, "At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past." As demonstrated in Joshua Marston's second feature, The Forgiveness of Blood, customs, traditions, dogmas, and deeply embedded ways of thinking that were once pertinent can become irrelevant and even damaging with the passing of time. An example is the Albanian Kanun law, an uncodified collection of customs and rules perpetuated by word of mouth since the fifteenth century. Incongruously existing side by side with high-definition TV, Facebook, cell phones, and texting, these traditions are anathema to the lives of many young Albanians.

As the film opens, an ancient horse-drawn cart plods its way along a narrow road surrounded by a broad expanse of open fields. On land previously owned by his grandfather, the driver Mark (Reft Abazi) and his teenage son Nik (Tristan Halilaj), a senior in high school, use the road to earn their living selling bread. Resentful and jealous, Sokol (Vetan Osmani), the current owner of the land, creates obstacles to the father and son accompanied by growing threats. The deep-seated antagonism rooted in years of jealousy and animosity is revealed at the local pub when insults are exchanged that stop short of violence. When Sokol closes the road, however, to Mark's cart and threatens him with a knife in the presence of his adolescent daughter Rudina ((Sindi Lacej), Mark returns with his brother (Luan Jaha) and Sokol is stabbed to death in a murder that takes place off-camera.

The brother is arrested and sent to jail for eighteen years, while Mark, accused of complicity in Sokol's murder, goes into hiding. One of the unwritten laws is the stricture that, in the case of blood feuds or other crimes between neighbors, an entire family must suffer the consequences of the crime even if only one member is guilty of the offense and that the family of the deceased can extract retribution by killing a male member of the guilty clan. The blood feud and the application of the Kanun law hits hardest on the two older children as well as young Dren. Rudina, who has dreams of going to university, is forced to leave school to take over father's business of delivering bread which she expands to include other items.

Nik, however, whose ambition includes wanting to open an Internet café, is chained to the home possibly for a long period of time, afraid to venture out for fear of retribution. The Forgiveness of Blood is not only a story about a conflict between past and present, but an exploration of the inner lives of people in a culture that we in the West are hardly even aware of. As in Marston's 2004 acclaimed Maria Full of Grace, his latest film is filled with a powerful authenticity racked with unnerving tension that tells a potent story of unfulfilled hopes and dreams. Immersing himself in the culture, Marston interviewed families living in isolation as mandated by the Kanun law, and shows events as they unfold without judgment or evaluation. With local first-time actors, Lacej and Halilaj giving nuanced and convincing performances, the result is a film of great humanity.

This powerful film immerses us in an ancient culture that continues to exist in modern times. Even as the inhabitants of the Albanian village enjoy television and the young use their cell phones to communicate, freshly-baked loaves of bread are delivered by horse-drawn cart. Without the glimpses of modern technology, we would think we were watching a drama from the 19th Century because of the nature of the feuding (stones placed on a dirt road to block passage) and the very clear, iron-clad rules from the Kanun for resolving the fallout from the feud that escalates to violence The film illuminates the powerful strictures under which the two feuding families live. Honor and respect may seem to us strange concepts to employ, following what we would consider a felonious crime and a matter for the police and a governmental system of justice, but the Kanun lays out the terms under which those who are deemed to have harmed another must isolate themselves and their families. Tradition provides a pathway to settling the feud, but there is no timetable for ending the state of being a pariah. It is the entire family who is societally harmed when the father takes a feud to its ultimate level.

An Albanian family is torn apart by a murder, resulting in a blood feud. This is a very good film about a generation gap in Albania. The grownups live in the old world, according to the old laws of the land (well the laws of North Albania, since blood feuds are mostly found there). The younger generation does not see any point to the tradition and unlike the grown ups sees other ways of solving problems.

If you watch this because you want to see a film about blood feud you will be disappointed. Watch this as a film about generation gaps. Keep in mind while watching this that there where only a handful of cars in the country when the father of this boy grew up. And the boy has a mobile, computer and the whole world at his finger tips. Albania took a 100 year jump into modern time in just 10 years. The difference between the generations is therefore greater than in most other countries in the world.

I have lived in Albania and I'm married to a woman from Albania so this film really spoke to me. It is surprisingly well directed. It is hard to believe that the director does not speak a word in Albanian and managed to get such natural acting out of the cast and have such good insight into Albanian culture.

The film is very well filmed. The camera is primarily there to tell a story and support that story, not to make postcard pictures to admire. And it does that very well.

The style of the film reminded me of the films by the Dardenne brothers. Very realistic, low scale and natural. I do think it helps watching this film from that point of view. This is a character driven film, not plot driven.

Another surprisingly good film from the director of Maria Full of Grace (2004).