Nothing can disappoint more than a person you love. ‘Ghost Trials‘ is the story of such disillusionment. It starts from a seemingly ideal father-son relationship and dives into the backstage of a dysfunctional family relationship. Will Sidaros captures in his short film the “great expectations” of a boy who, once he overcomes the comfort of childhood, becomes aware of the true value of love and devotion. It is a tender and painful exercise in sincerity, orchestrated with naturalness and psychological finesse. Its strength lies in the way it deconstructs the preconceptions behind which we hide, willingly or unwillingly. The short film approaches the lie of parental care almost violently and illustrates the coming of age of a boy for whom his masculine model was only an illusion. The idealization of the absent parent in the context of a broken family becomes the main sub-theme of this intimate drama that summarizes the evolution of a son who is forced to accept the harsh truth. Thus, he finally stops chasing the ghost of a “perfect” father who decided to leave him.
After his father has one last fight with his mother and leaves the family for good, Henry must understand that the parent who truly loved him was not the one who always gave him a pretext to have fun, but his “pragmatic” and “monotonous” mother, who chose to stand by him until the end. Will Sidaros offers us an equally sensitive and brutal x-ray of the emotional transformation that precedes adulthood, and also a suggestive metaphor about how any child needs hyperbolic, absolute projections of those around him. In other words, this short film is about the heroes we invent for ourselves, without always being aware of what lies beyond the surface shell. It’s a necessary evil that, while it helps us overcome ourselves, risks making us unable to see beyond the lie we’ve believed in. ‘Ghost Trials’ is an ambitious short film that impressed us not only with its thematic consistency but also with its technical qualities that illustrate an authentic and touching portrait in a concise, emotional, and compositionally well-orchestrated style.
For its psychological depth and the honesty with which it uncovers the “disenchantment” of the heroes of our childhood, ‘Ghost Trials’ was awarded the 2nd Film of the Month distinction in the February 2023 edition of TMFF.
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