Adivina
2016 · 20m · España
Directed by Gonzaga Manso
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
Routine has led Mauricio to lose things he took for granted; in an act of incongruent desperation he visits a fairground fortune-teller's caravan to tie up the loose ends of his life, and with her crystal ball she shows him a different reality.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The fortune-teller setup could've been a tired redemption arc, but Manso lets the surrealism do the heavy lifting—this isn't about answers, it's about what happens when reality splits and neither version comforts you. That refusal to resolve is genuinely unsettling in a way most shorts don't have the patience for.
Adivina positions itself deliberately within the magical realist lineage—Márquez by way of European arthouse—and the restraint of its mise-en-scène (the caravan, the crystal ball as threshold device) speaks to a filmmaker thinking formally about symbol and space. The editing rhythm between Mauricio's outer world and the visions is the real argument the film is making.
What makes this work is the decision to keep the fortune-teller herself almost completely opaque—no mystical wisdom, no knowing nods—which forces the entire weight onto Mauricio's face and how he processes what he's shown, and that single choice transforms a premise that could've been sentimental into something genuinely disquieting.