stillness (working title)
north macedonia

Stillness is a poetic, experimental audiovisual essay built around the Macedonian concept of pustelija — a word derived from pust (empty, uninhabited, solitary) that carries layered meaning in Macedonian cultural experience: a physical place of solitude, an inner state, a thirst for silence, a protest against the world, and simultaneously an attempt to reconnect with it.

The expression "to go into the pustelija" does not literally mean escape, but to step away from the noise of the world in order to hear one's own echo.

The film combines minimalistic and atmospheric imagery — empty mountain landscapes, open fields, abandoned houses — with intimate close-ups of human presence: hands, faces, gazes suggesting inner reflection. The camera is mostly static, with slow movements that reinforce stillness and contemplation. Sound design plays a central role, weaving fragments of interviews with natural ambient sound (wind, water, footsteps), silence, and literary narration drawn from Lidija Dimkovska's novel Personal Identification Number.

Research involves conversations with elderly people on memory and life experience, young adults (aged 25-35) on identity and the search for silence, and participants from nursing homes who are asked to draw what their own pustelija represents. Their voices overlap and respond to one another, forming a collective portrait of solitude.