KAKO LOS SON (LIKE A BAD DREAM)

LIKE A BAD DREAM is a tortuous rendez-vous of two dramatically diverse stories.The unpredictable hand of fate is bound to unite them. Bezania and Sheitan are the protagonists of the first story.
The sanguinary conflict that has redesigned the confines  of former Yugoslavia summons solder Sheitan to the front. Seven long years will pass before  Bezania  sees her man, and  lover , once again , their lives reunited in those very same  places that had once  been  the joyful scenario of an innocent love. But time changes  everything and the man knocking on Bezamia’s door has replaced the blue of eyes with two dark holes, void of any  life and passion. Sheitan’s return marks the beginning of a new existence within the reunited family, as the  horrors of the nearby war are to shift into  the couple’s  life with their relentless  pace.
Shaitan, as cited by the poet, is one of the Devil’s many names.”

Main while , somewhere in a western  European city , a young Macedonian student discovers the corrupted soul of the old Continent, learning the fatal lessons  that will eventually lead him to adulthood. LIKE A BAD DREAM  is a cross-way of lost soul  and restless anguish. With a moral that sounds like an epitaph: “I cannot turn back the clock, and change the past. Nevertheless, I want it back…”

BETWEEN TRAUMA AND DREAM
Zvonko Dzokic, MD

Everyone who is occupied with the exploration of the destinies of the “broken structures”, created by war traumas, at the same time is engaged in research of the possible destiny of the modern globalization, in regard to looking at the outcome of the struggle between two drives, Eros and Thanatos. The film “LIKE A BAD DREAM” and its author Antonio Mitrikeski create an original artistic contribution to discovering and asking for answers to these serious questions.
In this film are interwoven dream and reality of the main characters, who are presented as prisoners in “the games of the others”. Those games are turned around in the hermetic world consisted of forced roles, with two extremes: at the one side is “the victim” and at the other “the despot”.  The reality has no way out and becomes hopeless, and the dream is the only one defense mechanism which tries to keep the existence of the goodness in the characters, despite of domination of the delusional compulsive repetition of the violence. There are presented clearly “splitting” and “as if” phenomenon, as a common state of mind of the “broken structures”. At the same time, the environment strongly supports the choice of the already installed pathological roles, created through the so-called “inversion with the aggressor” defense mechanism, as well as “identity diffusion syndrome” and a remarkable perversion of the Libido.
At the moment when it seems that trauma is even stronger than dream, that is when Thanatos has defeated Eros, the author offers original actions, as possible solutions of the presented situation. He puts the older character, the Seitan, into the position of confrontation with the hopelessness of “compulsive repetition” which happens to him and his inability to resolve it on integrative way.

Furthermore, that position arises in the character the spontaneous decision to close the circle of the destructive impulsivity, enacting the scene of “sacrifice the Devil inside”, that is the scene which can be called “The death of the Death”. In such a way, the life ends “like a bad dream”, but reality is released to arise again the faith in the power of Eros. The younger character, Ivan, doesn’t allow himself to enter the circulus vitiosus of the “inversion with the aggressor”. He is being punished for that with violence and sexual abuse, made by the representatives of the “Brave New World”. That sacrifice is presented as a temporary one, as a bill from the learning about the illusions of the new world, as well as the experience which furthermore is completed in strengthening of the decision to sustain himself on the way of authentic individuation.

So, the film finishes not as an elegy for the Balkans and the “Balkanians”, but as a terrifying vision about the Global World. Of course, unless it’s main creators succeed to confront themselves with their “Devil”. From there, finally, everything originates.

2003 “Like a Bad Dream” The world premiere of this film has been realized during the film festival in Montreal . The film was represented in official competition and win the reword of the festival.

2003-2004 “Like a bad dream” has participated at film festivals in Saraevo, Tallin, Sofija, and odhers.