"Mirage" focuses on the experience of a 12-year-old boy living in contemporary Macedonia. This film shows the extraordinary vulnerability of boys -- those beings who will become "our men" -- to the savagery of abuse and hypocrisy, at home and at school, and in society. All of these assaults are, like war itself, direct attacks on all children, of course, but especially on boys -- something we are just beginning to wake up to understanding. Here we see all the promise and hope and persistence that boys offer freely and without strings attached being battered, humiliated and finally overwhelmed by meanness born of resentment, cowardice where there should be tender, savvy guidance, and neglect by distracted, emotionally (and economically) impoverished parents. Macedonia, yes, -- but the setting could have been any neighborhood in the United States that is clouded by poverty. The lead is a awesome performance -- just heartbreaking -- by Marko Kovacevic. We watch this this boy, this surprise in the midst of banality and misery that every boy springs on us and which should delight us and perhaps could save us -- we watch him methodically terrorized and hurt. We see his hope and optimism annihilated. At first, sheer bewilderment at unremitting harshness forces his head to hang low -- again and again -- until, finally, it rears up after "just too much" and he looks at us, and acts. By then he is an early version of Paris (played by Nikola Djuricko), the man he will become, who was able just barely to promise Marko a way out -- but then lets him down. For starters, let this film be seen by every school teacher in the United States, then every father, and if the schools themselves can find the courage, by every kid in junior and senior high school in America.
