Hidden Camera
SynopsisPlot
Upon arrival at the theatre, he discovers that there’s only one other person in the audience, a very attractive woman whom he’s seated next to. Then things get a bit more mysterious. The movie he’s been invited to see includes a scene showing him sitting in a park. Believing that he’s an unwitting participant in a complicated hidden camera show, he goes along with the variety of setups he’s faced with, which continue to get more involved and absurd. As the show develops, he becomes more and more paranoid and distrustful, but he keeps up the ruse to its thrilling conclusion.
Story
About this book
An unnamed narrator in Zoran Zivkovic's Hidden Camera receives a blank envelope slipped into his apartment door. Inside is an invitation to a private film screening. When he arrives at the theater, only one other person is present: a woman he does not know, seated beside him. The film itself contains footage of him sitting in a park, apparently recorded without his knowledge or consent.
Convinced he has been drawn into an elaborate hidden-camera prank, the narrator decides to play along. Each new setup he encounters grows stranger and more layered than the last, pushing further into absurdity. As the situations multiply, his willingness to cooperate starts to conflict with a deepening sense of paranoia. He begins to distrust not only the people around him but the very nature of what is happening to him.
Zivkovic is a Serbian writer known for compact, speculative fiction that operates in the space between the everyday and the surreal. Hidden Camera sits in that territory, using the familiar concept of surveillance entertainment as a starting point and then steadily bending it. The story raises questions about observation, performance, and the line between participation and manipulation.
