Synopsis

 After waking from a vision of his own death on a deserted beach, 23-year-old film student Vali decides to finish his graduation film at any cost. The story he is writing, about a young man who hides his sexuality until he breaks, begins to look uncomfortably like a future he recognises.

Pulled between Tringa, the girlfriend who calls from afar, a professor whose help is never free, and Drini, a magnetic young actor who unsettles him in ways he cannot admit, Vali starts to lose track of where the film ends and his own life begins. Invitations to success appear, but so do quiet bargains that leave a mark on his body and his work.

Through sleepless nights, parties that blur into blackout, and a final drug-fuelled trip by the sea, something breaks between Vali and Drini that the camera was never meant to see. When they meet again to finish the film, the scene they are supposed to make turns into something else, and Vali is left to face a question the script does not answer: is Vali directing the film, or has the film been directing him all along?

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

With I Must Go Down by the Sea Again, I wanted to explore the quiet struggles that shape many young lives: the search for identity, the ache of unspoken desire, and the tension between belonging and isolation. This is not only Vali’s story. Although a personal journey to me, I intend to capture a portrait of anyone who feels suspended between the place they come from and the place they long for.

The artistic approach grows from an atmosphere of suspended time. The film breathes through emotional pauses, fractured memories, and sudden moments of clarity. Reality shifts into dream. Youthful desire meets existential heaviness. Visually, the film moves between stark realism and soft surrealism. The rawness of daily life contrasts with the haze of late-night rooms, crashing waves, and fleeting visions that blur the line between truth and hallucination and silence.

In a strange way, this film is also an ode to silence. In a society that rewards masks and conformity, silence becomes both a form of protection and a source of pain. Yet within that silence there is a strange beauty, a trembling resistance, and a will to endure.

LEART RAMA

Leart Rama is a film director and DJ/producer from Kosovo. Growing up in a small town, he developed an early and powerful need for storytelling, which he began expressing through film, sound, and conceptual art. He is an alumnus of the Future is Here program organized by Dokufest, where he now works as a mentor. He graduated in Film and TV Directing from the University of Arts in Tirana in 2018.

After his studies, he moved to Prishtina and founded Katarzë Films, an alternative film collective dedicated to exploring taboo through narrative. His works include Life After a Lifetime and Endless Rebirths, Third Time’s a Charm, Four Pills at Night, The Station, Corona Diary, A Call from Yesterday, and many others screened at festivals worldwide.

He is also the founder of the music label blissblissbliss, promoting emerging sounds and artists from Prishtina. He is currently developing his debut feature film while actively contributing to Dokufest as music curator for its Dokunights program.