Mix 1/2 Albanian is a feature length documentary about Maria Eveliina, a half Finnish and half Albanian, school-dropout trying to figure out who she is and where she belongs.

• Many thanks, parhaat kiitokset, tack så mycket, kia ora! Thanks for the support from of all of you who backed and spread the word about our campaign! We can't thank you enough, it means a lot and is a positive start for the documentary film to be finished by next year 2013. Stay in touch, updated news on Facebook movie page. 
• If you missed the Kickstarter campaign, another way of helping us is to purchase cool or geeky item from online shop. 

We began following and documenting Maria's story in 2007, in Albania, Finland and Sweden. Director: "I have this great footage, which tells a heart warming story about Maria that I want to put together as a 60 minute film! The main character has to decide whether to look for her unknown Albanian father and to recognize her diagnosis of depression. There's a happy end for Maria, as she puts her life together and makes plans for the future!

There's a lot to do, and I'm looking forward to an exiting time at the edit with a creative editor. The film needs to be technically as good as it is creative in order to get into festivals and get distribution."

WHAT'S YOUR SAFETY BLANKET?

It's also about social filmmaking. I'm going to take the film and show it to other multicultural, stressed young people all over the world and ask them to respond to the story! We'll ask them, what's your safety blanket? These comments will be part of the final film. This is a new way of including the viewers.

THE PLAN TO MAKE IT HAPPEN

We'll start with the rough cut and give tasters to you as we go along. The Kickstarter month is the beginning of getting the money together, since professional post-production takes a lot, starting with using archive footage.

Relying on open source principles, the film also opens channels to discuss the multicultural experience, and users' video reflections on the story will be incorporated into the film.

Painting-style animations reveal Maria's psychological and emotional growth. Animation is a beautiful way of showing those most daring and radical things that need to be told in this film. Finnish choir and zither music along with Albanian folk songs shape the mood and tap into Maria's cultural history.

The film will be released at the beginning of 2013. Later, the film and footage will be released for free remixing.

BECOME PART OF THE STORY

We welcome your input. We are looking support for post-production; editing, sound design, music and animation as well as delivering the film to festivals and putting it online. Tell your friends and groups. You can always click like button and pass the video link on and follow updates on Twitter. I love you for doing all this! 

  
CREW SO FAR

Soile Mottisenkangas is Finnish filmmaker and artist, living in the UK.

(Photographer Minna Takkunen)

It's my first feature length film after short films and a background in visual arts. I changed career back to the moving image after a decade of youth work. I took master film studies to update skills. My favourite of all are documentary films and my philosophy is that everyone, really, everyone's lives are interesting enough to make a film about. Check out my short films online. There's this taster of special project "Bully Factory", my graduation film about school bullying - that film will we released later 2012. http://vimeo.com/docstory/  You can find more info and portfolio from my web home http://docstory.fi/ Let's improvise a give a hug to Finnish -day, if you catch up me on Foursquare.

Our first project together with animator Oana was a title animation for my films, based on Finnish fairytale Kalevala. I've looked forward to collaborate ever since. 

Oana Nechifor is Romanian animator and artist, studying in UK.

(Photographer Alex Nechifor)

I've started studying arts since I was a child and I'm still doing it... Before animation, my main interest was in art in public space, but exploring mediums led to the interest in moving imagery. Animation gives me a high level of control and offers so many possibilities to materialize ideas. Whatever medium I use, it's important for my work to be accessible, to reach large groups of people and to respond their needs. I think beauty matters and people nowadays forgot to contemplate, so my aim is towards a balancing act. 

This project is especially appealing for me because of the focus on the inner transformation of the character, an opportunity to understand and reveal some of the depths of human beings. Soile showed the ability to do that in "Bully Factory" and even though this project is more demanding there is no doubt she will succeed again.

http://oanajitareanu.com