In the Shadows

Two people are in an Indian back alley so narrow it's unlikely to be on the map; the place is so dense with buildings and shops that everything is entwined. The man seems unable to leave this backstreet, as if he is still caught up in some kind of past trauma, while the boy's life has been dominated by the desire to escape the oppressive contradictions of his father's love and violence. They are drawn in different directions when the two characters' desires clash: one in which the man tries to penetrate his most intimate memories, the other where the boy flees from this same space to an imaginary idyll of happiness and freedom. Ironically, these two courses take them neither backward nor forward; the present is the crucial cause that thwarts both the man's desire to return to the past and the boy's quest for a better future. As a result, their lives remain on the border between the past and the future, staying in the present as the material contours of their space surround them. (Busan International Film Festival)