"Lulekuqet mbi mure" (literally "Red poppies on the walls") a movie about life in a Tirana orphanage during the Italian fascist occupation of Albania (early 1940s), was indeed produced at the height of the communist era in Albania (1976). Therefore, the movie's plot and storyline could not escape the veil of politicization and communist propaganda that was the strong, common undertone of any Albanian movie during that era.
However, this movie, thanks to a unique, powerful plot, and especially superb acting from some of the finest Albanian actors of the time, was so masterfully delivered that in retrospect the main storyline (the drama unfolding inside the orphanage) manages to eclipse the propagandistic facade the ending of the movie is ultimately forced to convey (the communists are the good guys and the fascists are the bad ones).
While the movie owes much of its success to performances of one of the finest Albanian actors - Timo Flloko - starring as a history teacher, and the always charismatic, the late Agim Qiriaqi, superbly starring as the fascist school principal, one man's performance towers above all: the movie's main villain, the orphanage's manipulative, sadistic caretaker. Such pure evilness was delivered by the immortal Kadri Roshi, a legend of Albanian cinema, in perhaps the greatest role of his life. Such extraordinary is Roshi's performance that not only the villain is the most distinguished character in this movie (something highly unusual for Albanian movies of that time) but the Caretaker is also one of the best known, most quoted characters in the history of the Albanian cinema.
