THIS OLD MAN (2025)

In a frozen forest, a solitary Drifter follows a ghostly Old Man from a rocking chair to a ruined hotel, lured by silence and eerie self-portraits.

In the dead of a bitter winter, a solitary Drifter (Alf Lamers) trudges through a silent forest, fleeing the wreckage of his past life. On his back rests a rucksack adorned with pans and cans that click and clang with every step, a sharp metallic rhythm echoing in the white void. As the storm intensifies and daylight fades, he encounters an impossibility: an Old Man (Mario Lucente), sitting in a rocking chair half-buried in the snow.

The Old Man is wrapped in a heavy, archaic WWII soldier's coat; he does not shiver, and no white breath escapes his lips in the freezing air. In his lap, he clutches a bundle of disturbing charcoal sketches--self-portraits showing his own face transitioning from weary human to skeletal decay. Without speaking, the Old Man rises and beckons the Drifter to follow, leading him with unnerving steadiness toward a dilapidated, vine-strangled hotel hidden in the trees.

Inside the "frozen corpse of a building," the spectral guide leads the Drifter into the lobby and suddenly vanishes near a dark corner. Confused and freezing, the Drifter notices a section of the wall that has been hastily concealed with rotting planks. Driven by a morbid instinct, he pries the wood loose, revealing a hidden, airless crawlspace.

Inside sits the rocking chair. Slumped within it is a skeleton, draped in the tattered, dust-covered remains of the same WWII coat. In the skeleton's bony lap rests the actual bundle of drawings. The Drifter shines his light on them, realizing the truth: the Old Man had walled himself in years ago. The sketches were his final diary--frantic, charcoal self-portraits drawn in the dark, documenting his own starvation and death until the final page, which depicts only a screaming skull.