In partnership with a local filmmaker Kaltrina Krasniqi, Stærmose made interviews with 11 street kids. The interviews were based on a far-ranging list of questions about the kids' every day concerns, as well as their memories about war. "The stories that are in the film are the stories they told us. Precisely because they are kids, their memories are really interesting. Children tend to notice other things than grownups do. They don't have the same filters. They just see something and register it. Their memories were a way to get some images of a war I hadn't experienced. Also, it was a way to get other more interesting images, than we usually get from the news media," says Stærmose.
"I didn't want the film to be about the children's personal situations, and I definitely did not want to make it about feeling sorry for them." – Birgitte Stærmose
"I didn't want the film to be about the children's personal situations, and I definitely did not want to make it about feeling sorry for them. This process involved finding ways to go against the sense of pity these kids initially evoke in you. Pity is one way of relating to them – it's a way of protecting yourself. Of course, you feel sorry for them and they are victims, but I didn't see the point in making a film about that. I wanted the film to deal with the human aspects of what was going on inside of them."
"The monologues also help shatter the impression that the children were telling their own private stories. I was never interested in presenting any one child's personal experience in the film. What I was interested in was their shared experience and their shared situation. Everyone is telling everyone's story. They have a shared history, and their stories have a lot of characteristics in common."
The above quotes are excerpts from the article Observation to Construction, by Eva Novrup Redvall, in the DFI-magazine FILM #67 Amsterdam