Shadows (Senki)
Genre: Feature
Release Year: 2007
Duration: 120 minutes
Directed by: Milcho Manchevski
Screenplay by: Milcho Manchevski
Produced by: Milcho Manchevski
Synopsis:
Shadows is Milcho Manchevski’s most ambitious film to date, a mysterious, at times elusive work that delves into the mind of a young doctor whose life is turned upside down when he is involved in a car accident. Lazar Perkov (Borce Nacev) is a man with everything going for him. Young and good-looking, he has a beautiful wife and child, a house and a good job. His nickname is “Lucky,” but something important seems to be missing from his existence. He is constantly trying to live up to the expectations of a demanding mother and a bored spouse. After he barely survives a serious accident, his life changes in unforeseen ways.
He enters into a series of encounters with people who seem to die over and over again: a man with a baby, an old lady speaking an indecipherable foreign dialect and a strikingly seductive young woman. Their only message is “Return what is not yours. Have respect.” As these ghostly apparitions haunt his dreams and invade his waking life, Lazar gradually intuits that they are souls from the afterlife looking for peace. Or perhaps they are figments of his imagination? But why have they chosen him? Lazar seeks out a professor of linguistics as he determines to get to the root of the strange language that the older woman keeps muttering.
The professor is away at a conference, but his wife is eager to help – and Lazar soon finds himself involved in a perplexing relationship with this woman, whose life is also an enigma. Meanwhile, his neighbours come and go, people appear only to vanish again, and his wife seems indifferent to his fate as she dallies with a lover on a seaside vacation with their child.
Parents Guide: Adult situations
Director Information:
Milcho Manchevski
Biography:
Milcho Manchevski was born in Skopje, Macedonia and studied cinema and photography at Southern Illinois University. He began his career directing music videos and short films before making his feature film debut with Before the Rain (94), which won many awards including the Golden Lion and the FIPRESCI Prize at the Venice International Film Festival and an Academy Award® nomination for best foreign-language film. His other films are Dust (2001) and Before the Rain (1994).