Darkling

In post-war Kosovo, Milica lives with her mother and her grandfather in a house ringed by forest. Her father has disappeared, and the girl writes an essay to the United Nations about him. When evening comes the house shuts down: the shutters go down, the lights go off, and the three of them sit waiting for whatever might come out of the woods. The grandfather believes more and more in what he sees out there in the dark, while the soldiers guarding the area tell them it is only fear. Dušan Milić tells all of it from inside one house and through one family's eyes; he does not try to draw up a balance sheet of who was in the right, and he deliberately leaves it open whether the threat is real or imagined. The insecurity that followed the war in the region is built here in the language of horror: ordinary by day, unbearable at night.