Alba
2022 · 14m · España
Directed by María Victoria Glanzmann
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, tender
Alba has just been widowed. With a life revolving around her home in a small village, with a daughter and young grandson living far away, Alba must go out in search of work outside her home; in that search she discovers the sisterhood of her neighbours and the satisfaction of fending for herself.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the widow-finds-herself story to be maudlin and small, but Glanzmann refuses the easy sentiment—there's something almost austere in how she frames Alba's agency, and that refusal to wallow is genuinely strange in a way most films about grief aren't.
A quietly rigorous portrait of widowhood and economic necessity that situates itself in a lineage of European social realism; the careful spatial storytelling and the restraint in the performance work together to create something formally considered and genuinely moving.
The decision to root the entire film in Alba's physical presence—the way Glanzmann lets you watch her body move through work, through the village, learning how to take up space again—transforms what could be a familiar premise into something tactile and earned.