999-1 / minifilm / English subtitles
2013 · 5m · Québec-Colombia
Directed by Felipe Martínez
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, whimsical
There are nine hundred ninety-nine chances that she will send you to hell. But there is always a chance that she will say NO... with a smile.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A five-minute existential coin-flip wrapped in whimsy—the premise inverts every romance trope by making damnation the default and kindness the cosmic accident. It's the kind of absurdist premise that shouldn't work but does, because it's genuinely asking a question nobody else would bother asking.
Martínez situates this squarely in the tradition of darkly comic fabulism, though the minifilm format feels less like formal rigor and more like restraint by necessity; the tonal control is assured, but at five minutes it reads more as sketch than statement.
The entire film hinges on a single tonal pivot—that final smile—which transforms a throwaway premise about probability into something genuinely humane; it's the kind of one-frame choice that separates a clever idea from a film that actually *means* something.