NEWBORN KOSOVO

In the middle of Kosovo's capital city of Pristina, yellow letters over six feet tall spell out the word "newborn". Erected by a team of artists shortly before Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February of this year, the sculpture has been signed by over 150,000 people including the president and the prime minister. Images of joyous, flag-waving Kosovars celebrating their newly-democratic state in front of the newborn sculpture were broadcast to newly every corner of the globe by an international media that had followed the dramatic story of the new country's birth for many months. It seemed that after years of looking to their past to define their identity, Kosovars could finally look to the future, with the bright hope of a new democracy at their fingertips.

Today, eight months after independence, Kosovars are still focussed on the future. But as the international community begins to withdraw NGOs and the international media hs moved on to other areas of the world, Kosovo is left to stand on its own two feet. The work of building a democracy has become less abstract and the challenges of shaping it into something that will fulfill the high expectations of both its citizens and the international community is coming into sharp relief. It isn't easy, building a democratic state from scratch - and with only 47 out of 192 U.N. member states having recognized the legality of Kosovo's independence, there's a lot of pressure for Kosovars to make their case to the world. And even more importantly, for a region that has been at the mercy of so many other states - from the Romans to the Byzantines to the Ottomans to the Serbs - Kosovars finally have a chance to prove to themselves that they are up to the task.

But what does democracy look like to people who have never known one? What does it take to achieve it? How does it fund itself? What does it take to ensure that all of its citizens are able to participate? Must it compromise some of its constituents' needs in order to be inclusive to those with opposing desires? How does one make its institutions accountable to its citizens?

North America and Western Europe advertise democracy as the most human and most desirable form of state, and have made it their mission to support emerging democracies throughout the world. The fact is that - with a few exceptions - democracies not only do not make war with other democratic states, but also indicate a more contented population: studies of democracies suggest that choosing to live in a democratic society is one very important marker by which we can judge whether a society is happy.

In Kosovo, the question is whether or not a democratic society will work. Can the institutions and values - trust, tolerance, and cooperation - that make democratic society possible overcome ethnic tensions, mistrust, and intolerance that have kept the region in the grip of intractable conflict? And what is really the basis of democracy? Can it work in societies where more than 60% of people do not have jobs? Can people build a democratic system on the ashes of a civil war? And what is the best way for the international community to help?

Those are the questions that we had at the beginning of our research. Through months and months of investigation and careful relationship-building with media-wary Albanian and Serb Kosovars, we have found unusual protagonists with strong motivations and goals whose stories will address these questions in depth. Yesterday we met one of our protagonists for the first time: the Kosovar Minister of Justice Nekibe Kelmendi was kind enough to interrupt one of her parliamentary sessions for a first meeting with us. We knew that she was a strong person: after the Serb paramilitary killed her husband (a prominent human rights lawyer) and two sons in retribution for her husband's appeal to the Hague that Milosevic be indicted for war crimes, she kept on fighting for independence and against corruption in Kosovo. As a woman fighting for justice in a traditionally male-dominated, predominantly Muslim society, she is just one of the many incredible people that have agreed to share their stories with us for the film.