In nowadays blood feud is defined as a serious social plague in the Albanian society. It reveals the power vacuum that characterized post-communist Albania, and especially the extremely corrupt, slow, and unreliable judiciary system. It shows the incapacity of the state in defending the fundamental human right to life as the most fundamental and important right of individual protected by law: the right to education, social life, and freedom.

The Vukaj family of northern Albania, have been trapped in a blood feud conflict for 20 years.

Isolated, unconsidered, and dependant on corrupt public administrations, their entire life have been deprived. What could you aspire to be, to do, or to say when the only space of freedom you have is your home, when this home turns finally into your prison?

In North of Albania, the ancestral social code, so-called „Kanun,“ emerges again after the fall of the communism time in 1991. In 2014, the kanun was a degenerated version without boundaries and exceptions. It becomes total confusion. A deep social wound with too many bitter consequences, and a flagrant violation of human rights - Right to life, freedom, and justice, to education and social security. Since 20 years, the family Vukaj is trapped in one of those tragic stories. Lock inside their house, their only crime is to belong to „wrong“ clan.
Blood feud blights the entire life of this family. It has created a climate of fear, stress, and anxiety that casts a shadow over them, depriving them of free interaction with their neighbors and community. As trees are branded to be cut down, they carry signs of death - tired, afflicted, socially isolated. They sound like stories from another age, but they’re only two hours away by plane from Geneva or Milan. North of Albania, although close geographically, remains mainly unknown and impenetrable from the rest of Europe.