“Evolution is in the nature of things”. This sentence was spoken by the first female scientist in Albania, biologist Sabiha Kasimati, according to a testimony of her cellmate. She was arrested by the communist regime in 1951 and executed a few days later, without trial, together with 21 other intellectuals. Her scientific monograph “Fishes of Albania”, originally completed as her thesis at the University of Turin in 1941, was the first comprehensive ichthyological research in Albania. It detailed the freshwater fish species, their habitats, and the state of the fishing industry in the country. Following her execution, the Albanian regime suppressed her work. In 1958, a version was republished under the names of Soviet researcher Anatolij Polyakov and Albanian researchers Ndoc Filipi and Ndoc Rakaj, raising questions about authorship and attribution.

After the fall of communism, her original diploma was found in the Faculty of Biological Sciences in Turin, where she studied from 1936-41, but the original document of her scientific monograph remains lost. Driant Zeneli’s film, Those Sweet Murky Waters, is a tribute to Kasimati, her research on biodiversity, and her scientific passion, as an ichthyologist, for the world of fish living in freshwater. By using the techniques of clay, papier-mâché and robotics, a new story takes shape in the film, one of a woman who turns into a fish. The woman is a friend of underwater life and evolution, and, like a contemporary Prometheus, she steals the electric light from the dam to illuminate the fish living under the murky waters polluted by humans.