Watch a hypnotic film noir video by Chinese-Serbian artist Realma

Wandering, the latest release of Serbian-Chinese singer Realma is a melancholic tribute to the film noir genre.

With a slow rhythm and a jazzy cabaret touch, Wandering evokes the feeling of 1940s and 50s American film noir soundtracks. The lyrics, in Realma’s silky, deep voice, tell a love story with a gangster twist and a fatal ending.

Created by animator Mihajlo Dragaš, the music video for the song adds a compelling narrative to the track. In black and white, with sporadic touches of bright red, it follows a suspenseful story of crime, passion, and revenge between a man and a woman, dressed in glamorous trench coats against the backdrop of a foggy metropolis.

“The starting idea was to implement the recognisable style of classic black and white noir films, with symbolical accents of colour similar to graphic novels like ‘Sin City’,” Dragaš told The Calvert Journal. “Together with the music, it all came to be a kind of a love letter to the film noir aesthetic.”

Realma, whose real name is Ariadna Vrljanović-Zhao, is a Serbian-Chinese artist and singer-songwriter based between London, Belgrade, and Paris. In her work, inspired by the idea of “realms”, she seeks to create narrative songs that are deeply immersed in a music style and genre from a bygone era, with touches of contemporary alternative indie pop.