Hip to da Hop

Two voices talk about the impermanence of the world, question the inescapable death and remember and rethink old memories.

This movie is a journey through the director’s childhood. Fábio Silva uses the cinematic apparatus to take us on a trip to the past, to his past, towards the reasons behind his current estrangement from his father, calling on home videos as evidence of his account. A mysterious film in which the young filmmaker risks exposing his family privacy, full of betrayal and forgiveness. It is a privilege to watch a story told with such boldness, in which the boundaries between author, audience, and family trauma are barely distinguishable.

According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham was 100 when his son Isaac was born, and Sara, his wife, was no longer fertile. Isaac was one of three Israeli patriarchs, having died at the age of 180, after a peaceful life in Canaan, which would have been a lot shorter had his father sacrificed him on Mount Moriah as a young man. Fábio Silva revisits this precise famous biblical episode in “The Death of Isaac”, offering an alternative version in which matriarch Sara’s calls for divine intervention were not enough to make Abraham back down from his test of faith and obedience to God.