Spotlight on Kosovan Animation: Interview with Rising Star, Flaka Kokolli
Before visiting Anibar this year – Kosovo’s only animation festival – I must admit my knowledge of Kosovan animation was mostly limited to the festival itself, which has now been running for 16 years. Much of Kosovo’s animation industry today originates from Anibar and the community it has cultivated.
Flaka Kokolli (speaking) at the How to Start (and Maintain) a Career in Animation in the Balkans panel
Although Kosovo’s animation scene is still young and emerging, its future talents are clearly shining through – demonstrated by the many young creatives who gathered in Peja for the festival, including 18 projects pitched at the Kosovar-French Anibar Pro Genesis forum and an additional 9 projects presented at the Pitch It! event.
Despite all the wonderful projects and directors I encountered, one creative stood out for me during the festival – Flaka Kokolli. This may be in part to her asking the first question during my panel (Ask the Pro: Navigating the International Animation Landscape) – about how local directors can find producers in such a young industry. However, there was no denying how prolific she was during this edition of Anibar: she was a panelist on How to Start (and Maintain) a Career in Animation in the Balkans, won first prize at Pitch It! with her new project I Still Haven’t Cried, and represented her previous short film 17 O’Clock, which competed in the Animated Documentaries category.
Flaka Kokolli’s film ’17 O’Clock’ in competition
We caught up with Flaka to discuss her journey from festival volunteer to studio owner, the Kosovan animation scene, and her latest short film.
You were born in Kosovo, studied animation in Budapest, before returning to found your animation studio Flammorum in 2020. Could you share more about your journey and what inspired you to return to Kosovo and start your own studio?
I went off to study one month before turning 18, so when I graduated, I was only 20. At the time, my return back home was necessary to the point that there was no doubt I would return. This was in the year 2019, and Kosovo still needed VISAs to travel almost anywhere in Europe; Hungary included. To stay there, I needed proof of enough financial security to sustain myself for about a year, which for 20 year old me was impossible. Even getting there in the first place took one Student VISA rejection, and I was only granted the chance to go when I applied the second time. So, up until 2024, going and staying abroad was a bureaucratic hell for Kosovars.
Upon my return, I quickly realized that there were no opportunities for animated film; no studios had existed at the time, and all initiatives were on an individual basis, and of course, difficult to push through since it was hard to gather teams. I worked in motion graphics and illustration for 6 months, and when COVID hit, I decided to open a studio. Looking back, I never had a clear sense of what the consequences would be if that did not work out, but I am glad that was not the case.
Flaka Kokolli (centre) at the How to Start (and Maintain) a Career in Animation in the Balkans panel
Anibar is the only major animation festival in Kosovo. How important has it been for the local animation scene?
Anibar has been an amazing platform since its beginning. My first engagement with it was in 2013 when I participated in a workshop of theirs. I had been looking for a way to do animation and go past illustrating in class for some time, and when I was told about that workshop I immediately applied.
It was where I met some of the people I am closest to today, but I also kept in touch with the festival regularly. A large part of the encouragement to keep going with the studio definitely came from the festival and everyone I was meeting there. Being in contact with animators, workshops, masterclasses – plus, being given so many opportunities from the festival to see how animation is done elsewhere – made it a lot more tangible. And suddenly animation wasn’t this thing they just do in developed countries because they have solved some of their basic issues which we haven’t. Instead, it started feeling like another career that you can simply decide to do.
In terms of Anibar’s goal to start an animation industry in Kosovo – a place that had little to no animation tradition and no animation school, I believe it has truly achieved it.
I would like to delve more into your studio, Flammorum, and how it come together, especially during the middle of the pandemic! Could you tell me a little more about your team, structure, and how you all operate?
My first few jobs came purely through word of mouth, and I immediately applied in the National Film Fund with my first personal film. It was still during the pandemic, so everything was done remotely; even the interviews with our Center for Cinematography. In a few months, I received a positive answer and started calling up friends of mine – and one way or another I gathered up enough of a team to make that film happen.
One project came after the other and I had friends and people I met along the way, mostly through Anibar Animation Academy, and we were all working together. At a point, with two friends of mine we tried to start a collective, but none of us had the maturity and knowledge to keep that going. I kept getting projects and making teams based on the project. Two years ago, the projects were consistent enough, and the collaboration with the team was smooth enough, that it organically transitioned into a full-time team.
Now, and for the past two years, we are four women – Leonita Thaqi, Diellza Franca, Elsa Talla, and myself – and we still work interchangeably in our roles. The goal is for this to eventually change, so we can all stay in the creative roles we find ourselves most suited for. However, the wish to work as a collective is still present. The point of having a studio for me was to be able to work on animated films, not to run a business, so we are constantly working on arranging our team in such a way that we can all make decisions together, and there is more of a hierarchy in the project, based on who is directing it, rather than in how we function as a studio.
Flammorum Animation Studio, Prishtinë, Kosovo
What types of projects does Flammorum mainly focus on (e.g., short films, music videos, educational campaigns)? Which projects do you enjoy working on the most?
Currently, we do animated films, both commissioned and personal, educational videos, and music videos. All of these have been very fun to work on, especially considering the fact that creatively we treat them all in a similar way, working on films is the smoothest, just because it is a more long-term project and there is less worrying about when the next project will come up, since you have a longer period of scouting to find something.
But one thing that is impossible to ignore is the lack of producers in the country, we do produce for one another when needed, but it is a gap that’s noticeable and takes a lot of energy to fill.
As a studio owner, would you mind sharing your most challenging experience running a studio?
While I am the founder, our aim is for it to be a worker-owned studio, so both the privileges and the burdens that come with it are spread across everyone who is dedicating so many hours of their day to work here. A big difficulty so far has been knowing exactly how to do this and not really having any examples of similarly run businesses locally. But the more we get in touch with international studios that work in a similar way, the easier it feels. Just this week, I have already set up two meetings with Animation collectives where I intend to go into detail with questions and see how they are internally managed.
Aside from your new short film, what does the future hold for Flammorum? What projects do you have in the pipeline?
My short film ‘I Still Haven’t Cried’ has a long way to go until production (I expect that to be around the middle of next year), so the personal films of Leonita and Diellza, both of whom won funding from the Anibar Genesis pitch, are what we will prioritise. At the same time, part of our team, alongside our external collaborators Agon Ahmetaj and Blend Leci, are working on a video game that I am very excited about. While I am not personally engaged in that project, it is something that was born out of passion and I am very excited to see where that will go.
We took the summer off, partly due to a lack of projects, and partly to avoid a serious burn out, but it seems that we all used it to come up with great ideas of projects to do in the future and I am just really happy to be surrounded with people with so much passion, creativity and will to work hard.
The most difficult part in all of this has been the general feeling that “I have no fucking idea what I am doing” that has been following since the beginning, but the more time passes, the more that feeling seems to go away, and maybe one day I won’t hear from her at all.
Congratulations on pitching, and winning first prize for, I Still Haven’t Cried at Anibar this year! Can you walk us through the core idea of the project and why you decided to tell this particular personal story?
I Still Haven’t Cried is a project I have a hard time speaking about at this stage. It was triggered from a very specific encounter but that moment also seemed to be a culmination of so many similar encounters in life. Constantly being viewed through a sexual lens is a burden all women carry, and it is like a heavy cloud that stays on top of you no matter what you are trying to do. The film is not so much about the perspective of women, it is more about voyeurism and, untimely, sexualisation.
How is the project being supported now, and who/what are you looking for now to take the project to its next stage?
Besides winning the first prize at Anibar, I was awarded at the Euro Connection in Clermont-Ferrand by Dokufest, which I am extremely grateful for. I have also applied for the National Film Fund, which I will find out about in a couple of months.
So far, I have just been trying to pave the way for this film to have as much time and effort as it needs. Besides funding, co-production, and assembling an experienced team, I have been looking for sound designers and editors to work with; but most importantly I am still looking for a local producer.
Participating in all of these events has been very useful and proved extremely worthy; not just for the prizes but also for the people I have met, so I intend to keep going on like this for a while more.
I Still Haven’t Cried wins first prize at Anibar’s Pitch It! 2025
Looking ahead, what are your hopes for the future of I Still Haven’t Cried, Flammorum, and the broader Kosovar animation community?
For my film, for now, I just want it to be something I can look at and be truly proud of.
For my studio, I hope we will keep going and improving – keep the collaborative spirit both inside the team but also with our fellow animators and filmmakers outside of our studio.
And for the industry, I just hope to see it be a healthy industry where we prioritize self-expression and the well-being of each-other in that process. In this current economical climate it feels too easy to let go of anything you are passionate about and only work from a place of fear about survival, which in turn prioritizes profit and growth, and that is often where original, strange, and risky ideas die. So I truly hope we can stay away from that as much as possible.