The past rarely remains stuck in time. It lingers, unresolved, in memory, in silence, and in the stories that refuse to settle. A Journey to Freedom is about excavating the spaces between what is spoken, remembered, and withheld in our histories that continue to shape our sense of self in the present. A feature-length documentary, the film traces the legacy of Communist Albania through the intimate lens of one family, unfolding as both a personal investigation and a broader inquiry into how history is remembered, silenced, and reconstituted over time. Directed by first-generation Albanian-American filmmaker Anisa Selenica, the film is simultaneously a story of resistance and a reminder of how the trauma of the past reverberates across generations.

At the center of the film are the director’s grandfather, Tomor Selenica, and great-grandfather, Alush Lleshanaku, two men whose lives were shaped by resistance, survival, and loss under Hoxha’s totalitarian regime. Through family testimony, archival materials, and present-day footage, the film reconstructs their trajectories, from political imprisonment and illness to attempted escape and exile, and, in Alush’s case, death at the hands of the regime. These individual histories unfold within the larger story of Albania’s transformation into one of the most repressive and isolated states of the twentieth century.

The narrative moves between past and present, assembling a nonlinear chronology in which historical events such as foreign occupation, ideological alignment, purges, and eventual political collapse intersect with lived experiences and those who endured them. Each atrocity and upheaval is now grounded in the reality of a life lived, suffered, or extinguished as a result. Rather than presenting history as stable or complete, like a set of facts coldly written out in a history book, the film reveals the past as contested and fragmentary, shaped as much by personal memory as by official record.

The scope of the film extends beyond the family through conversations with historians, writers, political figures, and a psychologist, including Edi Rama, Gazmend Kapllani, and Enriketa Papa. These voices provide context while also introducing tension between public narrative and private experience. Psychologist Sonila Sejdaras, for instance, offers a framework for understanding how trauma persists across generations, deepening the film’s emotional and psychological dimension.

While the film uncovers documented realities, known details of state surveillance, forced labor, political persecution, and the mechanisms of control exercised through institutions such as the government’s secret police, called the Sigurimi, it is just as concerned with what remains unknown. Countless histories were never fully recorded; others exist only in contradiction. As the director assembles her family’s past, she encounters gaps in memory, inconsistencies in testimony, and the inherent limitations of archival evidence that speak not only to the history of Albania and its diasporic communities but also to numerous other communities across the globe and throughout time.

In this way, the film resists resolution. There is no perfectly packaged ending awaiting the end of this investigation. It does not seek to produce a singular, authoritative account but rather to hold space for uncertainty. In its own open-endedness, it asks what it means to inherit a history that is incomplete and how one might begin to reconstruct meaning within that instability.

What is passed down to each of us? That is what A Journey to Freedom asks of its viewers. In sifting through what has been remembered and lost, written and erased, proclaimed or silenced, we come to understand that every person has their own inherited histories that shape who they are today.

While the film offers a glimpse into Albania’s past and its continued struggle to define its place in the contemporary global context, we learn about the turmoil of younger generations as they grow further removed from the realities of communism and the resilience of their predecessors. The film forces us to consider what happens when a nation’s history is remembered unevenly, and what does it mean to pursue truth within that uncertainty?