Cristal House (crystal house) is the name of a racing horse. In her new project, Anna Malagrida draws upon photography, text and video to carry out the attempted depletion of a place: a horse-race betting house located in the center of Paris. From the street and through the large windows, Malagrida shoots repetitive movements and the waiting of the gamblers. Located in the interior of the room, she meets them and carefully listens to them. Lured by great megalopolis, a large majority of the gamblers are migrants coming from all over the world dreaming of a better life. The notions of dreaming and the inherent hope to every gambler unfolds into the image of the one who migrates.

A strange game of reflections places the audience before the hopes of the hapless. Their words, reproduced in the text fragments, shape the lives and dreams that converge in this venue of encounter and gamble. From the interior of this Cristal House, the camera records through the windows a passage of the life in the streets, showing the movement of the city while revealing its multiculturalism and intense pace. Malagrida attempts to depict all every-day things and events that the camera manages to capture through different perspectives given by the windows. Thus, the betting house is transformed into a theatre of hope and the city into its scenery. Seductive, a promise of a better life, the metropolis gathering individuals coming from all over the world becomes a transit space, of fortuitous intersections, and a multiplier of solitudes.