The Film is a collection of short stories written during various periods. The author himself describes them as ghost stories or horror stories. The stories are linked by an element which may be called ”the fear factor”: the inexplicable, the irrational which turns up in the lives of the protagonists and adds tension to the plot. However, these stories go beyond the narrow specifics of genre, because the author adeptly manipulates them using a variety of means of expression in order to elicit in the reader an effect of unease, simultaneously inspiring thoughts on the metaphysical. In the events portrayed in these stories, the everyday mingles with the surreal, and the poetic with the terrifying, resulting in texts that can be interpreted on several levels , posing a challenge to the reader’s erudition. In most of the tales, the terrifying element is not the “external” factor; – using stream of consciousness, the disjointedness of time and space, unreliable narrators, and other techniques, the writer masterfully conjures an atmosphere in which the reader begins to discern the “internal” fear inherent in the narrative, and the instability of reality and its unpredictability. Zeibots constructs the characters’ dialogues and internal monologues which are so typical of every person’s running internal “conversations with the self” with the professionalism of a playwright. He tangles threads of various truths and compels the reader to become completely absorbed by the story’s setting – , providing the main ingredient in a cocktail of tension, interest and fear.

Contact: Bārbala Simsone, barbala.simsone@zvaigzne.lv