Abrám
2022 · 5m · Estados Unidos
Directed by Marcos Pico Rentería
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, mythic
Abrám goes in search of his son's forgiveness by way of a tomb in the desert. Both seek to say goodbye, and the distance between them is no obstacle: father and son have only a few moments together to give each other the last goodbye on two distinct, distant planes.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The whole 'father seeks son's forgiveness across spiritual planes' thing is pretty well-trodden territory—Rentería's doing sincere mythic work here, but there's nothing that makes you go 'wait, WHAT?' It's competent and melancholic, which is fine, just not the kind of premise that makes consensus people uncomfortable.
Rentería positions himself squarely in a lineage of elegiac desert cinema and classical reconciliation narratives, and the formal constraint—two planes, one goodbye—feels like the kind of considered structural choice that rewards close reading and gets debated at breakfast for exactly the right reasons.
The decision to stage the goodbye across distinct spatial and ontological distances, rather than collapse them, is what carries this—it forces a visual and sonic grammar for intimacy that can't touch, and that restraint is what makes five minutes feel like a complete reckoning.