Juan José Arias Gil

A staged birthday celebration and a visit to the director’s father’s home. From the interplay of memory and imagination, the film explores how family archives shape fictions of the past.

Director Juan José Arias uses old family videos to try to find out what kind of person his father was. His image comes back in dreams, his voice whispers in the smell of rain and his embrace lies in an old house in the country where they used to spent the holidays. Reality, memories and dreams blur together in a poetic way.

I remember very little from those years: the years of the rabbit. My favorite animal, my favorite color, the mountain in front of my house, my friends’ faces, the games with my sisters. Leaving my life in Mexico like that erased my memory. I color in these memories as an attempt to gather them. Forever.