ABDUL & HAMZA

Abdul and Hamza are hiding in the mountains. Armed with a GPS, they are preparing their escape. Lots of expectation, living day-to-day together in an abandoned house. They exchange confidences about their respective families back in Somalia. There is almost nothing from Serbia: a conversation in a town with a local resident, the shadow of war, rap performed in the cosy ambiance of a bar. How long have they been there? Where will they go next? Marko Grba Singh chooses not to give much away so that we can better guess at the invisible links that bind the two migrants to their temporary refuge and to those who have gone before their exile, and resistance in all its forms. Their discreet presence haunts the sequences in which at first they seem absent; when they visit a castle where, legend has it, two famous rebels hid during the Ottoman Empire and then during the Second World War two anti-Nazi resistance fighters took shelter. The treks around the forest by the sound team, pre-occupied with recording the sound of military planes that fl y over the area. Each man, Abdul and Hamza, exists in this place to which they do not belong. Abdul eats lemons. Hamza etches his name on a rock. And when it is time to go, they’ll disappear. (CG) Marko Grba Singh