Casa de Fieras

Pablo, a lonely eight-year-old only child, and Lucas, a convenient imaginary friend his own age, break the true friendship that helped Pablo navigate the last summer of his childhood when he asks Lucas to go away and start a solo quest on Madrid’s disturbing night.

Pablo (8) meets Lucas at a difficult time in his life. In the neighborhood, he has no friends, and at home, his parents spend more time arguing than spending time with him. But thanks to Lucas, Pablo has someone to play with and avoid loneliness. There is only one problem: Lucas is not real, he is an imaginary friend. As Pablo withdraws into himself, his environment makes him see that Lucas is not a solution, but the opposite. Because Pablo is no longer a child and now it's time to grow up...

In the last summer of his childhood, Pablo (8) begins to perceive the world as a strange place where he doesn't quite find his place.
In the neighborhood -Moratalaz, Madrid- his friends; Hector (10), Jorge (9), and Dani (9) grow up fast, changing the cartoons on TV for porn on the Internet. They talk about sex, and drugs, and sometimes behave violently, making Pablo uncomfortable as he tries to adapt, unsuccessfully, to this new stage. Unwilling to enter the adult world that fascinates his friends, Pablo is left on the sidelines and begins to feel alone.
At home his parents, Inés (33) and Nacho (35) perceive his difficulties as childish and try to push him to grow up, making him participate in their adults' problems. Problems that Pablo cannot, and doesn't want to, understand. They argue during the day and fuck at night, filling the house with animal screams and moans that increase Pablo's anguish in the face of something as violent as unknown...
But one day, after suffering a humiliating joke from his friends, Pablo meets Lucas, another boy his age. There is only one problem: Lucas is not real. He is an imaginary friend.
Now that Pablo finally has someone to play with, the mythology of the neighborhood and the stories of adults will become a game where the true meaning of things, the one that his friends make up and that his parents don't tell him, doesn't matter much, interpreting reality in their way.
As Pablo withdraws more and more into himself staying away from home, avoiding the other children, and getting closer to his new friend, his environment makes him see that his behavior is out of the ordinary. Pablo is no longer a child and now it's time to grow up. Even if he doesn't want to. Even if it costs him. That's why Pablo renounces Lucas, expelling him from his life. But he finds no help on the road to maturity. His parents still don't understand him and his friends don't accept him either.
So one night Pablo runs away from home with the will to discover for himself the mysteries of a world that nobody explains to him and, following the map of a flyer that offers Paraguayan prostitutes in the neighborhood. From Pablo's point of view, Madrid at night becomes a more sinister and dangerous scenario than the dark forests of horror stories.

Director’s note
Children perceive reality through a protective membrane so they don't need to be taught their elders' language. Childhood makes its way into a strange world. The lines that separate the world of adults are blurred, and children have to learn to survive in a distorted reality where the words that define concepts such as loneliness, violence, and sex do not exist… Casa de Fieras vindicates childhood as a foundational stage in the life of every person. A reflective look at that point of no return in which being a child implies playing at wanting to be an adult. It speaks of reality as a personal term and imagination as a lifeline. As a child, you discover the world by unraveling a manipulated reality. Like that instant when you notice your parents have closed their bedroom door and sense something is happening. You hear their breathing on the other side. If you want to know what's going on, you have to make it up or peek in. It's like that. Fire only burns when you stick your hand in.