You Won’t Be Alone
**Seen at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
The logline description of this movie on IMDb does not even begin to describe what “You Won’t Be Alone” is about, and that is all the better. Writer-director Goran Stolevski certainly has witches on his mind, but not simply to create something terrifying. The main character in his film will take on many faces throughout the film, but not to terrorize but to learn. This is a film about learning what it means to live. That people die in the process is the nature of the film as it’s told.
Stolevski and cinematographer Matthew Chuang appear to adopt the style of Terrence Malick throughout much of the film, and it starts when we first see a cat in frame at the beginning of the film. The cat leaves frame, and then re-enters. The sound tells the story; that’s not the same cat. The film takes place in a 19th Century village in Macedonia, and the plot begins when a woman with a newborn is confronted by a witch (Anamaria Marinca) looking to eat her child. She doesn’t, but the mother hides her daughter in a cave, where she will grow in secret. When she is of age, the witch returns, and takes her into the light for the first time. The young woman cannot speak, but we hear her thoughts on the soundtrack. What progresses is a journey of discovery where she will rebel against her elders, all to figure out what it is like to live.
To divulge any more would be to get into spoilers, but I really would prefer not to do that. Watching this film unfold, Stolevski puts us in our heroine’s perspective as she begins to learn what it is to be around other people. The film is gruesome, but the narrative is not about blood and guts but of a young woman trying to realize who she is. It’s a film where you will either go with what Stolevski is doing or not, and I very much did. If I’m not identifying the actress who plays the woman, Noomi Rapace (“Lamb,” “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”) plays her for a time, but the film is not about one identity or individual skin but how this entity inhabits many in hopes of learning about life. Marinca is chilling as the witch, and she is an ever-present force throughout the film, always in the main character’s ear, like a demonic spirit telling them they cannot do what they want. Everything comes full circle, though; what we’ve learned along the way determines whether it ends there, or keeps going. This is an evocative, haunting use of folk horror to study humanity, and it enthralled me every step of the way.
