In the presence of the filmmaker, followed by a discussion 

During a sabbatical in Mexico, Belgian journalist Ivan follows the trail of the enigmatic writer Celestino Pérez. Upon arriving in the village where he is supposed to live, the author is nowhere to be found. The writer’s family welcomes Ivan, who, fascinated by the strange daily life of the household, finds himself drawn into an unexpected confinement. As the days pass, his own experience begins to dissolve into the imagined portrait of Celestino. 

Celestino is Hans Bryssinck’s first narrative film. The themes underlying this film are the notion of the intruder, the limits of hospitality and a strangeness that lurks within each of us. ‘A strangeness reveals itself “at the heart” of what is most familiar’ wrote Jean-Luc Nancy in The Intruder (2000). Fascinated by this sentence and inspired by his own embodied experience as a foreigner living in Mexico, Bryssinck explored the apparent opposition between strangeness and familiarity.