| Summary/Abstract |
Back in the 15th century, the great Albanian warrior George Castriot, who is also known as Skanderbeg1 (a corruption of the name Iskender Bey given to him by the Turks as a respectful comparison to Alexander the Great), single-handedly fought Ottoman expansion in the Balkans for decades. The pope welcomed Skanderbeg in his residence, and Rembrandt considered it an honor to paint a portrait of him. The West, with its profuse espousal of Christian values, promised help to Albania, but, as usual, failed to keep its word. Incidentally, Skanderbeg was portrayed in the Soviet-Albanian film The Great Warrior Skanderbeg, which came out in 1953 and was directed by Sergey Yutkevich, a Soviet director and screenwriter. The movie was a remarkable event, and what made it so was not only the cinema debut of brilliant Soviet actor Yury Yakovlev but also the directing prize received from the Commission Supérieure Technique of the 1954 Cannes Film Festival. In 2012, the movie was restored to mark the centenary of Albania's independence. It remains the world's best-known film about Albania.
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