Now I Am Old and Do Not Need the Moon
2023 · 12m · USA
Directed by Dasha Bough
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
An intimate portrait of Daria, an aged woman living in a Roma village in Moldova, in fear of the Russian-Ukrainian war arriving at her doorstep.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's formally restrained to the point of passivity—a competent portrait that could've been radical if it had interrogated the *why* of its own gentleness instead of just performing it. Bough's afraid to let the contradictions breathe.
Bough locates herself precisely in the essay-documentary lineage—think Agnès Varda's attentiveness to solitude and duration—and the film's refusal of score or narrative convenience becomes its formal argument about presence and witness. The title's negation mirrors the compositional clarity; every frame earns its restraint.
The decision to let Daria's silences carry the weight instead of overlaying them with exposition or music—that's the whole film, and it's the kind of radical subtraction that only works when the director trusts the subject and the lens in equal measure.