INTRODUCTION

What emerges from the chapters relates experiences of individual and collective loss, and their psychological implications, as they manifest themselves in the narratives of the films being discussed by our authors, and in the psychoanalytic interpretations they offer. Consistently with a developmental approach to our understanding of psychological events, losses and their emotional consequences – the ‘shadows’ of the book’s title – are here reflected upon in the wider context of the passing of time, experienced as loss of what we used to have earlier, regardless of what may also have been gained through growing older.