A 39-minute fever dream where grief edits itself.
After the disappearance of a young actress, a director is left alone with memories, guilt, and the silence she left behind. In an attempt to understand what happened, he confronts himself, the past, and an unknown figure who seems to have always been there. Chronicles of Sonatine or: Shadows of the Broken Memories is a story built on half-truths and the people who get lost within them. Can you restore a memory… without distorting it?
Cinematography
Japan-Albania visual dialogue that haunts.
Direction
Zilgir wields 39 minutes like a weapon.
Writing
Half-truths that reward obsessive parsing.
Director
Alper Zilgir
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The title's 'Sonatine' references Kitano's 1993 yakuza film about failed escape—here, escape from memory itself. Zilgir weaponizes this intertextuality for Balkan-Japanese diaspora commentary.
The 39-minute runtime mirrors a classic film reel, forcing the narrative compression that mirrors how trauma truncates memory. Every cut is a lie we're complicit in.
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