The Divided City of Mitrovica

Podeljeni grad Kosovska Mitrovica

Marko Grba Singh
Serbien, Kosovo | 2025 | 17 min
Schweizer Premiere
Sprachen : Albanisch, Englisch, Serbisch
Untertitel : Englisch, Französisch

25 Jahre nach dem Ende des Kosovo-Kriegs ist Mitrovica noch immer eine ethnisch geteilte Stadt, in der Albaner und Serben nebeneinander herleben. In streng komponierten, statischen Einstellungen filmt Marko Grba Singh eine regungslose und verlorene Jugend in durch den Konflikt erstarrten Landschaften, in denen die Pracht der Kirschblüten die stille Rezitation von Abschiedsgedichten begleitet.

Twenty-five years after the Kosovo War, Mitrovica remains divided along ethnic lines, with Serbs and Albanians living in separate neighbourhoods on opposite sides of the city. Marko Grba Singh (Stars of Gaomeigu, awarded at VDR 2017) captures this reality through a minimalist approach. In a series of static shots, the Serbian filmmaker films the surrounding landscapes, where only a few ruined buildings bear the scars of the past conflict. It is Spring, and nature – indifferent to human passions – serenades the awakening of life and adorns the abandoned houses with bright splashes of colour from the blossoming cherry trees. Two voice-overs in Serbo-Croatian and Albanian, composed from poems by Aida Secic Nezirevic and Latif Berisha, silently intone farewells to maternal figures, possibly recited by the two young adults on the screen – lost in thought, their solitude and the deserted spaces around them. The Divided City of Mitrovica offers a sensitive meditation on a frozen past that will not pass, and which casts its shadow over the future.

Emmanuel Chicon

The Divided City of Mitrovica, 2025
Rampart, 2021
Tesaurus, 2020
Stars of Gaomeigu, 2017
Abdul & Hamza, 2015
If I Had It My Way I Would Never Leave, 2015
Pale, 2013
At Least We’ve Met, 2011