Fantasy-Horror but also psychological drama, surreal and visionary, which analyses in an allegorical and evocative way the metaphysical and mysterious aspects of reality and of the human being. Laura, a young woman just married, sees her dreams, aspirations, values and ideals collapse with the sudden and premature loss of her beloved husband.
Alone and lost, she will live everyday life as a sentence; a trap, sad and empty. In a desperate attempt to escape at all costs from this alienating and unacceptable reality, she will resort to witchcraft. But her existential malaise will not have (an easy) resolution…

DIRECTOR’S NOTES:
“After the ritual” is the allegorical representation of a person’s life or of the history of the human being in its inevitable internal changes and in the flow of Time. The short film, in its suggestive abstraction, which has the flavor of poetry, pain, metaphysical reflection, expresses the epiphany of a new look at things.
The short film, in its suggestive abstraction, which has the flavor of poetry, pain, metaphysical reflection, expresses the epiphany of a new look at things. A look that first bitterly experiences the loss of innocence, of one's own illusions and the impossibility of going out of oneself; and subsequently a more conscious, elaborate and mature approach towards the ethical-moral sphere or the spiritual dimension of the sacred; to finally arrive at intimately welcoming the unbreakable will to be surprised and amazed once again by all the Mystery that is inside and outside of Man...
The plot is an allegory of alienation and existential malaise resulting from the discomfort of feeling lost and misfit, frustrated and (in)suffering in the face of a dark and tragic reality.
The condemnation of the protagonist, however, is not so much in experiencing this disturbing and distressing condition, but in discovering that any attempt or tool she uses to escape, will only prove to be another illusion that will bring no benefit and will not improve her life.
Escape from this repressive system occurs through dreams, imagination, fantasy, art, faith, mysticism, etc., but often these channels are not truly effective or sufficient to calm one's inner torment in a complete and full, lasting and definitive way.
Often they are temporary, precarious, provisional relief valves, especially for certain types of particularly sensitive or vulnerable individuals. And when one gets to overcome every limit and to register every new fall of illusions, Man finds himself, in spite of himself, more aware of himself and of the world, of their crudeness and their horror.
Totally stripped inside, Man finds himself as if in front of a mirror, and for the first time he glimpses his true essence and his true deepest nature.
A nature in which beauty and goodness (con)fuse themselves with the cursed part of the human being: the horrific, perverse, mad, evil side, but also the other from itself, the disturbing. Denying this “monstrous” dimension that inhabits us is a process destined to fail.
Man therefore cannot do anything but (re)cognize it, welcome it and “accept” it in himself. Learning to know how to “manage” this duplicity, this ambiguity, will be the right way to start a useful process of human growth that will no longer make us succumb to Evil and horror, but that will allow us to transform and make a little less horrible everything that is or appears horrible…