TIFF
MOVIE REVIEW
The Hill Where Lionesses Roar (2021)
The awkward title might sound better in the original Albanian. The lionesses are three poor, socially outcast 18-year-olds in an Albanian-speaking village in Kosovo, impatiently kicking their heels as they wait to discover if they have passed their college entrance exams. Education is the only ticket out, and they are desperate for its escape; no country will give them visas without an education, and none of them want to spend their lives in their backwater town, cleaning toilets or cutting hair like their mothers. They have ambitions but no one else has any of these things for them. But as the summer passes their dreams alter, twisting a coming-of-age story into something else altogether.