The End of Time

Background

The End of Time is an experimental film about that one hypnotic moment on a regular, unassuming Tuesday when one realizes that time has stopped and the universe has been sucked into a single smile.

Production

Principal photography took place in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. Post-production was completed in New York City and Macedonia. Cinematography by Alain López Martínez, edited by Kristina Pozenel, music and sound design by Igor Vasilev Novogradska, visual effects by Misho Ristov Rex, and color grading by Michael Dwass.

Release

The End of Time premiered at Aspen Shortsfest, where it won the Ellen Award.

Critical reception

This is what the critics had to say about The End of Time:

THE END OF TIME is an impressive minimalist phenomenology of time, consciousness and selfhood. Subtle art stratification of the awareness of the duration of a multitude of timelines within a film frame and the distillation of a pure emotion. A sunny Cuban afternoon on a street in San Antonio de los Baños, the fictitious mise-en-scène gradually breaks down, fragmenting into a crystalline pictorial structure with a disrhythmic duration of the whole, a micro-image archipelago with unequal deceleration of the parts. The quest for a fixed point hypnotizes and displaces the normal conditions of the perception of time.

THE END OF TIME, a winner of the prestigious Ellen Award at one of the most renowned short film festivals in Aspen, as well as the award at the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival in Czech Republic, is incredibly attractive cinematic and artistic playfulness, an experimental transcendental journey to something we are very familiar with, but in the same time remains very difficult to grasp, to those rare and timeless moments when we feel truly ourselves, truly at home.

(Dejan Zdravkov, FFF 2018)

Festivals and awards

Tirana Film Festival - Best Art Video and Experimental Film

San Gio Film Festival - Best Editor

Aspen Shortfest - Ellen Award

Arizona Film Festival

Palm Springs International Shortfest

Short Shorts Film Festival and Asia

Festival International du Film Nancy Lorraine

Festival International de Curtametraxes de Bueu

Odense International Film Festival OFF17

Festival International du film Nancy-Lorraine

Oaxaca Film Festival

Buffalo International Film Festival

68th Montecatini International Short Film Festival

Manaki Brothers International Cinematographer's Film Festival

São Paulo International Film Festival

St. Louis International Film Festival

Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival - Special Mention

Bogota International Short Film Festival

Alternative Film/Video Festival

Additional screenings

Manchevski's "Dreaming a Wu Yan Poem" art exhibition - Shanghai, China

Manchevski's Master Class at Herceg Novi International Film Festival, Montenegro

Milcho Manchevski retrospective at the International Motivational Film Festival - Bridge of Arts, Rostov on Don, Russia

Kino Palais Buenos Aires

Kultivator Kino Karposh