The City of Shadows

This story is about time. Not the kind measured by clocks or marked on calendars, but inner, human time—the time we can feel. The time needed for a glance, a friendship, a thought, a game. The time that is increasingly disappearing. Have you noticed how often we say, “I don’t have time”? How much less we talk, play, or simply spend time together? How more and more people grow tired, irritable, and sad—as if something were quietly but constantly taking something from them? The City of Shadows is a world very much like our own. People live here in a constant hurry, making plans and saving—until one day they no longer understand what it is all for. The invisible Grey Gentlemen, masters of saving, secretly steal time and, with it, the joy of living. People stop talking to one another, children stop playing, and no one notices how the colors are slowly fading. Then Momo appears. She is not a hero in the traditional sense. She has no superpowers; she simply knows how to listen. And when the world begins to sink into shadow, she is the only one who dares to set off on a magical journey to find time. This visually poetic story is about how important it is to stop, listen, and know how to simply be. Perhaps time is not a treasure to save, but a gift worth sharing? The project is funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania.