Two years ago, global cinephilia watched the re-release of «Not a Pretty Picture» (Martha Coolidge, 1976) with a mixture of surprise and dread; in this performative documentary, the director had re-enacted the sexual assault she suffered as a teenager. The film unearthed a reality that was so rarely discussed that it received hardly any attention at the time of its first release. If now seems the right moment for cinema and its audience to tackle the issue of sexual violence head-on, a film like «Second Skin» is irrefutable proof of this. Mariia Lapidus’s debut feature film brings together various testimonies from Russian women who have suffered assaults; among them, in a terrifying twist, that of the film’s creators themselves. These harrowing experiences are re-enacted in a sterile space, through allusion and performative twists. Gestures, narratives, costumes and conversations are the minimal elements that make up a series of interventions which, whilst on the one hand are blood-curdling, on the other reveal the network of listening, discussion and solidarity established between Lapidus, her collaborators and the anonymous women behind each sequence, each story. «Second Skin»like Martha Coolidge’s film or «Sans frapper» (Alexe Poukine, 2019), forms a powerful link in an increasingly significant trend that makes testimony and a skilful balance between denunciation and detachment its defining hallmarks. GABRIEL DOMÉNECH GONZÁLEZ