RETREAT

Over the past twenty years, thousands of young people were recruited in North Macedonia to work in the kitchens and laundries of the US military bases in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their wages, up to 30 times higher than those in North Macedonia, have been invested by their families back home in the construction of small palaces and lucrative real estate. They kept the second largest city of the country even economically alive. But with the withdrawal of the last troops from Afghanistan in 2021, many of them returned home – bringing with them quickly-earned money, but also their traumas and war experiences, that have marked them.

This documentary depicts the complex connections between supposedly far-off and abstract wars and their very real effects at home. The film demonstrates the price of labour migration and exposes the gains and losses of decades of political and economic crises.

Anabela Angelovska © Olaf Tamm photos © Betty Herzner