“It’s a burning, breaking thing, this world, a biting, wretching thing. And yet … and yet …” This refrain, whispered throughout Goran Stolevski’s mesmerizing directorial debut, “You Won’t Be Alone,” serves first as a revelation, and then becomes something like a prayer. It ultimately serves as a thesis for this project, a contemplation of life itself through folklore, splashed with elements of horror. For all of the terrible things the characters in this film endure, it’s that “and yet,” that rings throughout the viewer’s mind. Life is bloody, and tragic, and often terrible, and yet, it can also be profoundly beautiful, in the simplest of ways.
“You Won’t Be Alone” is a fairy tale brought to the screen with a startling amount of realism. It feels like it comes straight from the old world, like watching a folk tale come to life, all too real in its terror, no gory detail glossed over. Set in a 19th-century Macedonian village, it’s a story of witches, and murder, and love, lost and longed for.
A mother pleads for her baby daughter’s life, making a bargain with the “Wolf-Eateress” Old Maid Maria (Anamaria Marinca), who has slunk into town looking for fresh blood. The mother promises the witch her daughter when she turns 16, but stashes her baby in a secluded cave, hoping to escape the deal she’s made with the devil. In this cave, Nevena (Sara Klimoska) grows up feral, alive, but not living a life, and soon, Maria comes to claim what she’s been promised, bringing Nevena out into the world and granting the girl her one witch’s spit. She teaches her to feast on animal’s blood and their ability to shape-shift, a remarkably violent and bloody process.
