Sara Klimoska

Willow

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Donka out in the fields

Three stories, two periods, one issue – children – in Willow, a spiky North Macedonian drama which first shows us “the old ways”, then reminds us that they exert a pull even on modern-day lives. The first story gives it to us neat. We’re in pre-modern, possibly medieval times, where childless Donka and her husband have been trying and failing to conceive for five years. They visit a crone and tell her of their predicament. They have tried all the old wives’ methods, they say, and now they have come to a proper old wife as a last ditch. She, cackling and stirring a pot like something from the Grimm brothers, tells them she … Read more

You Won’t Be Alone

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Noomi Rapace plays Nevena for a while

You Won’t Be Alone is a fairytale from Macedonia alive to the idea that darkness is a power in the world, one kept at bay by praying and, sometimes, by making unholy contracts with other forces. Its aim is to connect us with the mindset of the middle-European peasants who first told these stories, people who really believed in witches and changelings. Its lack of revisionism is unusual, refreshing and exotic. There’s no Angela Carter feminist re-imagining, à la Dances with Wolves. No Disney self-fulfilment. Marx and Freud are not to be found lurking in the subtext. The Grimm brothers would nod approvingly. When is it set? Focus Features, who distributed it, suggest … Read more