Home Sweet Home is another entry in the post-Balkan wars genre, but with a variation so clever that it stands out. Agron is a schoolteacher who joined the Kosovo Liberation Army and was presumed killed in battle. But four years later (as the film opens), he suddenly returns, having actually been held in a Serbian prison all these years. Usually with plots such as this one, he discovers that his wife has remarried, but, in Home Sweet Home, his wife, Hana, and his three children are delighted that he is alive…sort of.
The problem is that his death created great advantages for his family. Hana now has a well-paid job as the chairwoman of an organization that advocates for the rights of war widows. Not only is she able to support her family financially, she also has become a well-respected member of the community. Older daughter Ditra is accepted into medical school, but only because she is the child of a martyr. Even son Luan will lose his right to go on a field trip reserved for the children of martyrs. And then there’s Agron’s old friend and army buddy Bashkim, who has convinced an international NGO to donate money to the school where Agron taught, and of which Bashkim is now the principal, on the conditions that the school is renamed in honor of martyr Agron and that a bust representing Agron is installed in front of the school. So Agron, who wants nothing more than to return to his pre-war life as a teacher and a member of his community, is stuck hiding inside the house and sitting by a window watching the world outside.
