Rita Ora, the singer who was born in Kosovo and whose parents are Albanian, was in the country to toast the day with her film director partner Taika Waititi, which also fell on her birthday on Sunday, Nov. 23
“This is an incredible way to spend my birthday. I’m 33 today and I think we have done such inspiring work so far,” Rita told Kosovan Prime Minister Albin Kurti during the celebrations.
The Albanian leader later said, “This has been an incredible Sunday for me. I have to watch the video [of our meeting] afterward to make sure it was real.”
“[This] trip and this meeting made me so excited about the future,” Ora said.
The performer is one of Kosovo’s most famous ambassadors, and in 2018 headlined a concert to celebrate 10 years since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, when thousands of Kosovars packed the main square of the capital covered in the blue and yellow colors of the nation’s flag.
A video published by the mayor of Pristina, Perparim Rama, showed Ora touch the ground and move her hand to her heart when she touched down in the Kosovan capital over the weekend.
Ora’s family fled Kosovo in 1991 to escape the repression imposed by Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic after he stripped the former province of its autonomy.
In 1998, war erupted between Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian rebels and Serbian troops that left 13,000 people dead, most of them Albanians, and Belgrade withdrew its forces the following year after a NATO bombing campaign against Serbia, with Kosovo declared independence in 2008.
