A forceful work of personal geography that makes visible the former Yugoslavia’s traumatic breakup.
The 1999 total solar eclipse visible from Serbia was met with anxiety by the population, taking place during a period of disintegrating Soviet lifestyles. Meanwhile, the genocides committed during the ’90s remain a fresh memory, but taboo, and many are eager to forget.
Having left during the turmoil, Nataša Urban returns to her home country to collect stories from family and friends. Uncanny images and double perspectives haunt this essayistic documentary, as tales of past selves—told languidly, with unexpected poetics and quiet ignorance— are paired with landscapes scarred by history. Memory, like the eclipses bookending the film, is elusive: it threatens to overwhelm, only to slip away before one can take it in.
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