The roots of the inspiration for this film lie in a “vision” from an afternoon sleep. This is how its plot was born, within the mind’s imagination; and similarly, some of its images were created under the black curtain of closed eyelids.

Through their long and troubled journey and until the last moment before color correction, Shadows of the World shifted tones from a comic lament of a bleak nature to a lament that’s deeply ruthless and utterly gloomy in its understanding of the human temperament. That doesn’t necessarily signify an improvement, it is merely noted. It only has to do with the way each viewer understands the difference and the nuances.

One of my intentions within the short duration of the film was to see human temperament in the most final, hostile conditions: when after an undetermined, horrific devastation, it finds itself facing its deprived desires and its survival instinct– trapped in a claustrophobic environment, where the overall essence of man is fragmented and divided into characters of all social classes.

This story is about four crushed beings…

An explosive social mix, “caged” in a vast ghost-space, silently scattered in the harsh light of a trial; a trial that emerges from reality, from realism itself.

Here, I should make a point: the dramaturgical intention was for the hyperreal element invading the film to not be arbitrary, but to be innate; to be released through the expressionism of space and to permeate reality. Realism and Fantasy coexist, with the latter naturally stemming from the former.

The four persons in the film -these four beings- react to the drama of hunger, with the most instinctive reflexes: they subconsciously let themselves be driven by the memory of their previous social status. The action in the film unfolds in silence, only with looks, gestures and choking breaths until eventually… the fly pushes them over the edge, to engage in a violent conflict, choreographed in the style and tempo of the classic swashbuckling films.

Within all this, Memory couldn’t possibly be absent. She is the one that reveals the characters’ inner depth and motivates them, during the most critical instant, to retrieve the human element within them. This is why the fleeting moments and the glimpses of the past couldn’t be rendered as an accompanying element, but they are the factor defining the four persons as beings and that which alters their consciences in the end. Memory was shown in the form of a photo-story (i.e., still shots of various moments).

The long discussion is over. But there is a postscript: from the beginning, a fundamental intention of the film was the insightful approach of all the fields that contribute to the final artistic expression. By this I mean that to the actors and crew of Shadows of the World, the following was pointed out: their contribution is of the same crucial importance as the direction. And they embraced the vision with profound creativity. And therefore, the film is theirs too, since Cinema is an act of a collective soul.