Arta Dobroshi

To gauge Kosovan actor Arta Dobroshi's standing in her homeland, one need look no further than a recent skit on one of Kosovo's most popular television programmes. The piece revolves around a screenwriter's despair after failing to convince anyone to finance his film about a screenwriter trying to make a film with Dobroshi.

The 30-year-old is something of a national treasure these days, having earned worldwide acclaim for her performance in the titular role of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Lorna's Silence. In the film, she plays an Albanian immigrant in Belgium who enters a marriage of convenience with a junkie (Jeremie Renier) to obtain citizenship. The plan is for the husband to overdose so Lorna can then remarry and bestow citizenship on a rich Russian gangster. For her co-operation, Lorna is promised money with which she and her real boyfriend can open a snack bar.

There must be many people in Kosovo trying to meet you now.

Well they meet me - I walk down the streets when I'm there. I was known before, but people now recognise me much more. People are very nice and proud of me - they say, 'We feel like we are you, you've represented our culture.'

We had the war [between the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Serb-led Yugoslavian federal forces in the late 1990s] and since I was born we've had a bad situation here. For somebody from this region to have the success that I have had is meaningful to other people. I am one of them.

How did you prepare to play Lorna?

I went to Belgium and started a two-week course in French, because I didn't speak the language. Then I spent one-and-a-half months doing rehearsals, and after that we shot for three months - it was done chronologically so it helped me a lot. I stayed alone then and didn't go out. After the day's shooting, I went back to the hotel room. On Saturdays and Sundays, which I had off, I went to the pool. I never saw anyone - because Lorna is also alone and I tried to live her life. If we were filming a scene in which she was sad, I kept that sadness with me because it helped me.