Leo Karruli, the Albanian-American businessman who bought the struggling Johnstown Galleria in Pennsylvania at auction, is at the center of “Mall Country,” a new documentary that had its world premiere at DOC NYC, the largest documentary festival in the United States.
Directed by Brian Becker, the 84-minute film looks at the decline of the American shopping mall, once a gathering place for whole communities. The festival describes it as the story of an Albanian immigrant who “semi-accidentally” buys a mall in Johnstown and tries to keep it from closing.
“Mall Country” premiered on Thursday, November 12, at the SVA Theatre in Manhattan and screened again on Sunday at Village East by Angelika. Both screenings were scheduled to end with a Q&A with Becker, producer Carrie Weprin and Karruli himself. The film is available to stream online through DOC NYC until November 29.
Karruli grew up in a poor village in communist Albania. In 1991 he left for Italy, where he worked in restaurants before emigrating to the United States. Starting as a dishwasher, he built a business of 19 Italian restaurants in Florida, then moved into real estate.
He bought the Johnstown Galleria, a two-level enclosed mall near Johnstown, at an online auction in 2022 for about $3 million. The same mall had sold for $57 million in 2008. By 2020, after its anchor stores closed, it had gone into foreclosure.
Since then he has paid for repairs, offered small businesses flexible leases and, by his own account, sometimes taken a loss to keep tenants. “The mall isn’t dead. It’s not dying,” he told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2023.
Becker is a New York-based filmmaker who co-directed “Time Bomb Y2K,” which premiered on HBO in 2023. “Mall Country” is produced by Becker and Weprin.
Atlantiku first reported on Karruli’s work at the Galleria in December 2024.
