DIRECTRESS/AUTHOR/DOP/EDITING/PRODUCTRESS Natalia Sara Skorupa
The filmmaker uses a VHS camera to record her family’s Christmas. The document of the event evolves into a coming-out narrative shot in a home-video style.
In a small apartment in Poland, a grandmother celebrates Christmas with her two adult children and her grandchild. In Poland, it is traditional to share a wafer before dinner on Christmas Eve. Everyone breaks off a piece of the wafer, hands it to another person and speaks aloud their wishes for the coming year. The granddaughter uses an old VHS camera to film her family and this cozy tradition. The decision to record the event results in an unconventional home video: the anti-LGBT politics of the ruling party in Poland - Law and Justice - aren’t set aside simply because it is Christmas, and everyone has their own opinion on homosexuality. The table is laid, the wafer is broken…and the granddaughter comes out to her family.
NATALIA SARA SKORUPA (b. 1999 in Szczecin) studies experimental filmmaking at the Academy of Arts in Szczecin. She is a poet as well as a singer in the Polish-British band Sisters Memon, and is an accomplished guitarist and performer.
