For most complex 9-dimensional filiform Lie algebra we find another non isomorphic Lie algebra that degenerates to it. Since this is already known for nilpotent Lie algebras of rank $geq 1$, only the characteristically nilpotent ones should be considered.
We exhibit an example of a filiform (complex) Lie algebra of dimension 13 with all its ideals of codimension 1 being characteristically nilpotent, and we construct a non trivial filiform deformation of it.
We prove that there are no rigid complex filiform Lie algebras in the variety of (filiform) Lie algebras of dimension less than or equal to 11. More precisely we show that in any Euclidean neighborhood of a filiform Lie bracket (of low dimension), th
ere is a non-isomorphic filiform Lie bracket. This follows by constructing non trivial linear deformations in a Zariski open dense set of the variety of filiform Lie algebras of dimension 9, 10 and 11. (In lower dimensions this is well known.)
