Based on a novel by famous Russian science-fiction writers the Strugatski brothers, Days of the Eclipse is the account of a young doctor who travels to a barren, unnamed provincial town in Central Asia. Mysterious forces interfere with his research, however: unbearable heat, strange people, mysterious omens, a conversation with a dead friend, alien intervention. The film is structured on contradiction: soundtracks that don’t match images (as in the concatenation of a Moslem woman praying and a Looney Tunes–style song); color and texture that change drastically and randomly; images that are yellowed as though from heat or time or decay. In this poetic narrative, time is suspended and bent and causal relationships disintegrate at will.