“I Was Told Not to Make Eye Contact with Tom Cruise” is the title of an interview published in The Guardian in 2023, in which Jill Goldston looks back on a lifetime spent working as a film extra. She spent more than 60 years in the industry, during which she dined with David Bowie, attended the Oscars and earned the Guinness World Record for the highest number of appearances as an extra, no fewer than 1,951. Jill Goldston was everywhere. And yet, she was nowhere.

Elena Carvajal pushes this paradox to its limits, reflecting on film extras and everyone else who lives on the margins without their existence ever being acknowledged. Because existing is not the same as being visible. Through movement and a meticulously controlled narrative, Carvajal invites the audience into the poetry of tiny gestures, inhabited by glances, disguises and waiting, drawing us into the fragility of those who always remain in the shadows while the main action unfolds elsewhere.

From this seemingly simple starting point, a political question gradually emerges: who decides what deserves to be visible? And what effect does that have on what we choose to see and what we ignore? Through an evocation of cinema, this piece embraces lives that are hidden in the background and yet are utterly indispensable.

After appearing at El Corralito in 2024 with Mucha mierda, Carvajal returns to TNT as an artist in residence, joined by a group of local residents from Terrassa making their debuts as film extras. In a festival edition strongly shaped by dance, I was told not to make eye contact with Tom Cruise shines a spotlight on what remains unseen and yet still moves us.