Sazan Island, which lies off the coast of Albania, at the mouth of the Bay of Vlorë, between the Adriatic and Ionian Seas, has been a site of strategic importance from antiquity through the fall of the Soviet Union. During the Communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, which lasted from 1941 to 1985, it housed a military base and, it is rumored, a chemical-weapons plant, and access to the island was strictly forbidden. For children growing up in Vlorë, the mysteries of Sazan loomed large in the imagination.
It was only in 2015, following the gradual demilitarization of Sazan, that it became possible to visit the island for the first time in decades. For a group of local artists, it has since become a place of fascination and pilgrimage. “Sazan somehow has an apocalyptic touch,” says the artist and filmmaker Anna Baranowski, who directed the short film “Legacy,” about “bunkerization.” “You need a little courage to enter this wild island of thorns.”
