Director/Writer: Ilan Rosenfeld, Producers: Lorena Quevedo, Ilan Rosenfeld, Raquel Alarcon, Natalia Alvarez, David García, Violeta Trincado Production: Twins Latin Films and De Noche Creatividad, Argentina-Spanin-Uruguay, Language: Spanish, 13′, 2018, Rights: World (Except LATAM)
Madrid. A group of three friends get together for a housewarming dinner of one of them. Everything is going smoothly. The conversation revolves around everyday stuff, until they taste the grilled-vegetable lasagna. They can’t tell exactly what it is, but they are transported by the taste. They had never tasted anything quite like it. What’s on their table comes across as really precious, and sacred, so they decide to call in someone else to taste it. However, their guests’ reaction is not what they expected.
It is desperate anguish that sometimes turns into irony or absurd “Ilan Ronselfeld”. The short film ‘This is not food’, is part of a trilogy of absurdities by the Uruguayan director Ilan Rosenfeld and the story arises because of a debate at a dinner in Madrid among a group of friends who asks: Why don’t we cry when a plate of food is brutally tasty?
Directors Statement
It is about opening the heart to consecrate the experience. To transform an ordinary act into divine. At the beginning there may be a resistance, internal or external, because it is scary to confess the lyricism. But once a gap has been generated we can release the
emotions of the soul inside. Then the crack grows until separating from the every day and, in the poetic accumulation, the sacred appears. It may give laughter or shame, a condition of mystical comedy. The ideal scenario is built between strangers, where love is more difficult. So, two men go up for a bite of vegetables au gratin to the house of strangers.
Cast
Natalia Álvarez
David García
Raquel S. Alarcón