Beyond his narrative genius N.N.'s evolution turns his creations into significant (and) extra-film events. This is particularly evident in "THE ZERO YEARS" Beyond the obvious and the implied (global dictatorship, etc.) there is a discreet and penetrating psychological analysis and observation. As we know at the end of "THE ZERO YEARS" we clearly perceive that because of the deadlock and the lack of solutions its heroines choose hell over the free open world which (however) has been invalidated. It is both a conscious and an automated choice. The women are overcome by "institutionalism". Hell is fine because we know it and it is better than a supposedly free world, which, in any event, is wholly controlled and totally not free. "I love my bonds and my torment; they are better than the unknown horror of the outside." The "noir spoke" to us many times about impassioned heroes and their bonds, characters who are terrified of the free open fields. N.N. goes beyond this film-noir convention and reaches further to approach existential philosophy (particularly that of Camus). A micro-prison inside an enormous one. Whatever we choose we are trapped and what we demand is not to get OUT but to free everything, to tear down all the barbed wire. "THE ZERO YEARS" is a chronology of the end of civilization and of urban institutions. Everything is illusion; everything is utopia and a trap. ALEXIS DERMETZOGLOU