Since the Kosovo War over 25 years ago, Mitrovica has been a city divided along ethnic lines. The north is primarily inhabited by Serbs, the south is Albanian. Everywhere in the city, there are impressive, yet dreary ruins with blossoming cherry trees before them: the war and the division it caused are at once omnipresent and invisible. In his poetic experimental film, Marko Grba Singh captures this paradox in static shots. With no dialogue, but featuring two wonderful poems by Latif Berisha and Aida Šečić Nezirević, the film conveys the experience of saying goodbye to one’s own mother and painful, enduring loss in general – with trilingual subtitles reflecting the geographical divide: Serbian at the top, Albanian at the bottom, and English in between. Right in the middle of it all, left alone with the historical and urban heritage of their mothers and fathers, are two young people who seem lost, standing alone in the landscape. It makes no difference in which part of the city one might now place them.

Marie Ketzscher