SHAME AND MONEY
(The 2026 Sundance Film Festival kicks off Thursday, January 22 and runs through Sunday, February 1 for, sadly the last time, in and around Park City, Utah. Check out Chris Reed’s Shame and Money movie review, fresh from the fest. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
At one point in Shame and Money, the new film from Kosovan director Visar Morina (Exile), Hatixhe—one of the two main characters—tells her more well-off sister, Lina, that “Shame is a luxury.” By that she means that those who no longer have to think about basic subsistence can afford to worry about how society views them. Neither Hatixhe nor her husband Shaban have that luxury. Anymore.
As the film starts, however, their situation is quite the opposite. Hatixhe (Flonja Kodheli, Luna Park) and Shaban (Astrit Kabashi, Hive) live the life of middle-class farmers in a village where their family enjoys status and enough money to be comfortable. They share a home with Shaban’s mother and two brothers, one of whom, Liridon, is something of a ne’er-do-well whose primary activities seem to consist of asking for (or stealing) money from various relatives. When his latest request is rebuffed, he takes vengeful action.
The movie is marked by long cuts to black between pivotal moments, and after the first of these we find the family—including grandma and Hatixhe and Shaban’s three young daughters—arriving in the capital of Prishtina, where the very bourgeois Lina (Fiona Gllavica, Koma) and her husband, Alban (Alban Ukaj, The Albanian Virgin) have offered to help the now mostly destitute group. The city is a harsh environment after the pastoral tranquility of the opening, and money is scarce. Everything’s a hustle, and everyone’s out to take advantage of everyone else.
Shaban starts out as a seeming “nice guy” (a term repeated by those who meet him): a loving husband, devoted son, and doting father. When his two brothers fight in the opening, he does not intervene. Slowly, however, his calm begins to evaporate as the family’s station in life continues to diminish. It doesn’t help at all that Alban does not like his neighbors knowing that Shaban seeks work on the street—akin to how many immigrants to the United States solicit employment by standing outside a Home Depot—to supplement the jobs he does in Alban’s club.
Perhaps Shaban’s biggest obstacle, however, is his pride, which eventually forces what could be his downfall. Fortunately, for him and for us, the plot of Shame and Money is hard to predict, Morina delivering dramatic thrills that continuously catch us by surprise. There are occasional references to the region’s tragic history (including one slightly odd sequence set around the real-life location of a Bill Clinton statue in Prishtina) that add to the other layers about class and privilege, making of the movie a sharp critique of humanity’s love of stratification. Throw a great cast into the mix and we have a recipe for cinematic success. Hopefully, Shaban and Hatixhe’s economic resurrection will soon follow.
– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)
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