MAMI

 At barely a year old, Banushi was placed in the care of his grandmother in Albania until his thirteenth birthday. When he reunited with his birth mother in Athens, he moved into the apartment above the bakery where she worked. There, the scent of warm bread mixed with the voices of women—young and old—who shaped his everyday life. A life cradled by different generations with flour-dusted hands. The Albanian words “mami” (mother) and “mam” (bread) come together: One pulls out one’s heart and offers it to another like a warm loaf of bread. 

Drawing inspiration from life, the widely praised Albanian wunderkind Mario Banushi creates a visual feast: an unholy and dreamlike monument to the mother-child relationship. To celebrate it. To exorcise it. To fill it with vows and curses. To fall in love with it.  

MAMI is a hymn to all the women who raise us. 

Mario Banushi was born in 1998 and lived in Albania until the age of six, before moving permanently to Greece. He studied acting at the Drama School of the Athens Conservatory, from which he graduated in 2020.  The same year, he made his first short film Pranvera, with which he participated in the 2021 Tirana International Film Festival. 

His first work as a stage director was the performance Ragada, which was created and presented in a house in Athens, during the pandemic lockdowns.  
His next work, Goodbye, Lindita, premiered in 2023 at the experimental stage of the National Theatre of Greece, and quickly accumulated an enthusiastic audience and rave reviews, resulting in consistent sold out shows and international invitations from esteemed festivals and theatres, such as the International Theatre in Amsterdam, the Adelaide Festival in Australia and Bitef in Belgrade in which Mario received the Bitef Special Award “Jovan Ćirilov” and the Politika Award for Best Director.  
His third work, Taverna Miresia – Mario Bella Anastasia, was presented in July 2023 at the Athens Epidaurus Festival for three sold-out performances and has been touring internationally since the beginning of 2024. Mario Banushi’s trilogy is usually referenced by the title Romance Familiare, which means family romance in Albanian.