9 pasos
2018 · 7m · España
Directed by Marisa Crespo, Moisés Romera
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, family
Tones: contemplative, tender, tense
For small Saúl, the night is dark and full of horrors, and crossing the long dark corridor to the toilet terrifies him, while his father tries to persuade him it is safe and watches from one end.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone's going to call this a tender coming-of-age story about childhood fears, but what actually matters is that it's built entirely on one deceptively simple spatial constraint—a corridor—and it never breaks that rule or reaches for easy catharsis, which is genuinely subversive in a landscape of heartwarming family shorts.
The formal precision here recalls the pedagogical restraint of early Pialat or the Dardenne brothers' approach to domestic space: nine steps become a mise-en-scène for negotiating vulnerability between parent and child, and the directors trust editing and negative space where sentiment would be easier.
The entire film hinges on a single directorial choice—keeping the father's perspective fixed at one end of the corridor, watching—which transforms what could've been maudlin into something structurally austere and actually moving, because we're forced to read Saúl's courage through distance and the father's patient presence rather than close reassurance.