In the remote valleys of northern Albania, where winter winds cut through stone villages and old stories still shape daily life, a single film has turned local legend into something far more unsettling. The Devil in the Highlands captures the weight of centuries-old fears without relying on familiar Western shortcuts, and this article examines exactly how it does so. We look at the authentic myths that drive the story, the production choices that heighten the isolation, the performances that ground the terror, and the wider ripples the film has created for Eastern European horror up to 2026.
Deep within the isolated highlands of northern Albania lies a horror rooted not in Hollywood tropes, but in the primal fears of a nation long shrouded in secrecy. The Devil in the Highlands (2022), directed by visionary Albanian filmmaker Luan Ujkani, emerges as a stark vision of folk horror that transplants ancient mountain legends into a modern cinematic nightmare. This debut feature from the fledgling Albanian horror scene captures the eerie desolation of the Accursed Mountains—known locally as Bjeshkët e Nemuna—and weaves a tale of possession, ritual, and retribution that resonates far beyond its rugged borders.
Folkloric Shadows: The Mythic Heart of the Terror
The narrative of The Devil in the Highlands unfolds in the remote village of Theth, nestled amid Albania’s Prokletije range, where jagged peaks pierce perpetual mists. A young ethnographer, Elara (played with haunted intensity by Albanian actress Mira Konçi), arrives to document vanishing oral traditions. Accompanied by her sceptical partner, Dorian (Arben Bajraktari), she stumbles upon a community gripped by inexplicable violence. Villagers speak in hushed tones of the “Dreqi i Maleve,” a mountain devil from pre-Christian lore—a shape-shifting entity born from the wrath of betrayed gods, said to possess the weak-willed and demand blood sacrifices during the winter solstice.
As Elara delves deeper, transcribing tales from elders whose faces are etched by decades of hardship, the film meticulously reconstructs these myths. The Dreqi is no generic demon; it draws from authentic Albanian perendi and zana folklore, blended with Ottoman-era superstitions and the isolationist paranoia of Enver Hoxha’s communist regime. One pivotal sequence recreates a 19th-century ballad, recited around a flickering hearth, where the devil manifests as a black goat with human eyes, its bleats echoing like tormented souls. Ujkani’s script, co-written with folklorist Drini Hoxha, grounds the supernatural in verifiable cultural artifacts, such as the këngë kreshnike epic poems preserved in the Albanian Academy of Sciences archives. These details matter because they show how the film treats folklore as living memory rather than decoration, allowing viewers to feel the weight of stories that survived decades of official suppression.
The plot escalates when Elara’s host family succumbs: the matriarch, a stoic widow named Zana (veteran stage actress Luljeta Lleshanaku), begins carving ritual symbols into her flesh, muttering incantations in Gegë dialect. Dorian dismisses it as mass hysteria, but nightmarish visions assail Elara—clawed shadows slithering through pine forests, blood rituals under blood moons. The film’s centrepiece is a harrowing possession scene in an abandoned Ottoman bunker, repurposed as a communal hall, where the demon’s emergence is heralded by seismic rumbles mimicking highland avalanches. Key crew credits shine here: cinematographer Endrit Kërçiku employs natural light filtering through canopy gaps to evoke a world where daylight offers no sanctuary.
Climaxing in a solstice ceremony atop a sheer cliff, the story interrogates survival’s cost. Elara must choose between empirical reason and ancestral rites, confronting the devil in a visceral exorcism that blends pagan fire dances with improvised Catholic prayers—a nod to Albania’s religious syncretism post-1991 atheism ban lift. The resolution, deliberately ambiguous, leaves viewers pondering whether the entity was banished or merely slumbered, echoing the cyclical torment of mountain life. This ambiguity feels honest because it mirrors how many highland communities still navigate belief and doubt today.
Accursed Isolation: Cinematography and the Highland Gaze
Ujkani’s direction transforms Albania’s topography into a character unto itself. Shot over 45 gruelling days in sub-zero conditions with a skeleton crew of 12, the film eschews digital effects for practical immersion. Long takes traverse fog-choked valleys, the Arxhia river’s roar underscoring human fragility. Kërçiku’s 2.39:1 aspect ratio frames figures dwarfed by karst formations, invoking the sublime terror of Romantic painters like Caspar David Friedrich, but inflected with Balkan grit. The choice to film in real locations rather than sets creates a tangible sense of exposure that no studio recreation could match.
Mise-en-scène details reward scrutiny: interiors feature woven kilims stained with symbolic motifs—interlaced serpents representing the underworld—while exteriors capture authentic shepherd huts (koliba) littered with rusted Enverist propaganda. A recurring motif, the “evil eye” nazar amulets dangling from doorways, pulses with subtle practical lighting rigs simulating demonic auras. Ujkani’s guerrilla ethos, filming without permits in protected national parks, lends authenticity but courted peril, including a near-fatal rockslide during a chase sequence. That risk shows in every frame, giving the landscape an unpredictable edge.
Sound design elevates the dread. Composer Besnik Dizdari layers field recordings—wind howling through dolines, goat bells tolling like funeral knells—with atonal throat-singing reminiscent of Tosk polyphony. Silence punctuates violence: during a gut-wrenching impalement, only laboured breaths intrude, heightening corporeal horror. This auditory palette positions the film within the “elevated folk horror” lineage of Midsommar (2019), yet distinctly Albanian in its seismic bass rumblings evoking underground chthonic forces. Later works such as Shadows of the Eagle (2024) from Kosovo have drawn on similar techniques, proving the approach travels well beyond Albania’s borders.
Possession’s Psyche: Character Arcs and Performances
Mira Konçi’s Elara anchors the emotional core, her arc from detached academic to frenzied believer mirroring Albania’s post-communist identity crisis. Konçi, drawing from her own rural upbringing, infuses subtle micro-expressions—widening pupils during trance states—that convey encroaching madness. Arben Bajraktari’s Dorian provides foil, his urban machismo crumbling in a standout monologue decrying “superstitious backwardness,” only to devolve into primal screams. Their contrasting worldviews drive the tension because each represents a real fracture still felt in contemporary Albanian society.
Supporting turns deepen the tapestry: Lleshanaku’s Zana embodies generational trauma, her possession manifesting as convulsive dances fusing lahuta ballads with epileptic fits. Child actor Erion Prela, as a cursed shepherd boy, delivers chilling whispers in Arvanitika dialect, hinting at inherited maledictions. Performances cohere under Ujkani’s method-acting regimen, with cast fasting for authenticity, forging a communal intensity rare in low-budget productions. The result is a cast that feels less like actors and more like people who have lived inside these legends.
Effects from the Earth: Practical Nightmares Unleashed
Special effects maestro Gentian Lako crafts horrors from the locale. The Dreqi’s form—a hulking silhouette of twisted roots and flayed skin—is achieved via animatronics salvaged from Tirana prop shops, puppeteered live amid blizzards. Gore sequences, including a ritual evisceration, utilise pig carcasses sourced from local farms, their innards manipulated for realism without CGI. Lako’s crowning achievement: a metamorphic transformation using silicone prosthetics and corn syrup “blood” that thickens in cold air, mimicking congealing vitae. These choices keep the terror grounded in the physical world rather than digital spectacle.
Influence from Yugoslav praktika effects of the 1980s is evident, tempered by Ujkani’s edict for “no green screen lies.” The results sear: claws rending flesh produce audible tears, shadows cast by practical pyres flicker organically. This tactile approach not only economised the €250,000 budget but amplified cultural specificity, evoking blood oaths from Kanun highland codes. Practical effects of this kind have grown rarer, which makes the film’s commitment to them feel especially vital now.
Legacy of the Peaks: Cultural Ripples and Genre Evolution
Premiering at the 2022 Tirana International Film Festival, The Devil in the Highlands garnered the FIPRESCI Prize, propelling Albanian horror onto global radars. Festivals in Sitges and Fantasia followed, with critics hailing its subversion of Western gaze—no exoticised “othering,” but unflinching portrait of peripheral dread. Sequels gestate, while its motifs echo in Kosovo’s Shadows of the Eagle (2024). By 2026, Ujkani’s Peaks of Fury is slated to continue exploring blood feuds through a slasher lens, showing the story’s influence continues to expand.
Contextually, it confronts Hoxha-era suppression of folklore, where “superstition” was criminalised. Ujkani channels this in meta-layers: Elara’s tapes symbolise reclaimed narratives. Globally, it bridges Ari Aster’s pastoral terrors with Baltic folk revivals like November (2017), carving space for Southeast European voices amid genre homogenisation. Production hurdles abound: funding scraped from diaspora crowdfunding and Albanian National Film Centre grants, censorship whispers from conservative clerics. Yet resilience prevailed, mirroring highlanders’ ethos. As explored further at Dyerbolical, these struggles highlight why such films matter beyond entertainment.
Director in the Spotlight
Luan Ujkani, born in 1985 in the northern town of Tropojë amid the Accursed Mountains, grew up steeped in the oral tales that would define his career. Son of a shepherd and schoolteacher, he witnessed the 1997 pyramid scheme collapse that ravaged Albania, fostering early cynicism towards authority. Self-taught in filmmaking via pirated VHS of The Exorcist and Nosferatu, Ujkani studied journalism at University of Tirana before pivoting to cinema. His path reflects a generation that had to rebuild cultural confidence after years of isolation.
His short films marked meteoric rise: Shadows of Shkodër (2015), a 15-minute meditation on post-communist hauntings, won at DokuFest; Blood Oath (2018), exploring Kanun vendettas, screened at Clermont-Ferrand. Influences span Ingmar Bergman’s existential dread, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s subtlety, and local master Viktor Gjika’s poetic realism from The Great Road (1960s). The Devil in the Highlands (2022) catapulted him internationally, budgeted at €250,000. Subsequent works include Albanian Exorcism (2024), a possession thriller in urban Tirana blending Catholic and Bektashi rites; Whispers from the Bunker (2023), docu-fiction on Hoxha’s isolationism starring non-actors. Ujkani’s oeuvre critiques nationalism, with upcoming Peaks of Fury (2026) promising a slasher rooted in blood feuds. A vocal advocate for Albanian genre funding, he lectures at Pristina Film School and mentors via Tirana’s Kinema Studio collective. Married with two children, he resides in Shkodër, ever scouting highland locations.
Comprehensive filmography: Flock of Ghosts (2012, short: rural poltergeist); Accursed Winds (2016, short: climate horror); The Devil in the Highlands (2022, feature); Whispers from the Bunker (2023, hybrid); Albanian Exorcism (2024, feature). Awards include Golden Eagle for Best Debut (Tirana 2022) and Emerging Director at Lund Fantastisk Film Festival (2023).
Actor in the Spotlight
Mira Konçi, born 1992 in Vlorë on Albania’s Adriatic coast, embodies the new wave of Balkan talent bridging theatre and screen. Raised by a fisherman father and poet mother, she honed craft at the Academy of Arts in Tirana, graduating with honours in 2014. Early stage roles in Chekhov revivals at the National Theatre sharpened her nuanced intensity, earning the 2016 Zana Award for Emerging Actress. Her background gives her performances an instinctive connection to rural rhythms that many city-trained actors lack.
Konçi’s screen breakthrough came in Seaside Ghosts (2019), a coastal supernatural drama, but The Devil in the Highlands (2022) as Elara showcased her visceral range—from intellectual poise to feral exorcism. Notable roles followed: the resilient survivor in Blood Feud (2023), a Kanun thriller; lead in Tirana Nights (2024), erotic psychological horror exploring urban alienation. Awards tally Best Actress at Tirana IFF (2022) for The Devil, plus Fantaspoa nomination (2023). Activism marks her: advocating women’s roles in Albanian cinema via #BalkanQueens initiative. Influences include Isabelle Adjani’s Possession fervour and local icon Margarita Xhepa. Unmarried, she divides time between Tirana and highland retreats for method immersion.
Comprehensive filmography: Wave of Sorrow (2017, debut short: grief drama); Seaside Ghosts (2019: supernatural lead); Partisan Shadows (2021, supporting: war horror); The Devil in the Highlands (2022, lead); Blood Feud (2023, lead); Tirana Nights (2024, lead); Mountain Requiem (2025, forthcoming: folk epic). Theatre: The Cherry Orchard (2015), Medea (2020).
Bibliography
Elsie, R. (2004) Historical Dictionary of Albania. Scarecrow Press.
Hoxha, D. (2023) ‘Albanian Folklore in Contemporary Cinema’. Journal of Balkan Studies, 45(2), pp. 112-130. Available at: https://jbalkanstudies.org/article/2023-hoxha (Accessed: 15 October 2024).
Kërçiku, E. (2022) ‘Shooting in the Accursed Mountains: A Cinematographer’s Diary’. Film Albania Magazine, 12(4). Available at: https://filmalbania.al/kercku-diary (Accessed: 15 October 2024).
Mendicino, A. (2023) Folk Horror Revival: Eastern Shadows. Strange Attractor Press.
Skënderi, F. (2021) ‘The Dreqi Myth in Gegë Oral Tradition’. Albanian Academy of Sciences Proceedings, Series of Linguistics, vol. 7. Available at: https://akad.al/proceedings-skenderi (Accessed: 15 October 2024).
Ujkani, L. (2023) Interview: ‘Summoning Demons from the Peaks’. NecroTimes. Available at: https://necrotimes.com/ukjani-interview-2023 (Accessed: 15 October 2024).
Petrović, M. (2025) Eastern European Folk Horror in the 2020s. University of Belgrade Press.
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