This Old Man - Collector's Edition (BLU-RAY + CD)

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.