Filippo Filliger

On Christmas Eve, a troupe re-enacts the classic French play Santa Claus is a Stinker. On stage and backstage, the actors reveal their wounds and memories, mixing satire and confidences. Moving back and forth between fiction and reality, the play denounces the hypocrisy of the festive season, and questions the meaning of solidarity, family and theater itself.

On a mission to define friendship, Filippo Filliger weaves together, like a Chinese portrait, objects, memories, and affection. A fine gesture, simultaneously generous and modest, which is successful in approaching and translating an intangible matter; that which even sometimes manifests itself in the mere obviousness of its existence. Although feelings cannot be represented, they may at least be invoked, such as the figure of the synecdoche—one part to skim over everything, in this specific case. The image on film holds itself at a distance from the sound and exacerbates a feeling of in-betweenness: time passes, impressions fade, while relationships are built, imperceptibly.

Young Darwin is feeling bored in his Yucatan village. Playing games on his parents' phone or using the forest as a playground with his brother doesn't help shed his gloom. So he decides to find out if Shaman Charli's stories are true and plucks up the courage to visit a forbidden cave.