Aliens
2016 · 6m · Spain
Directed by Jiajie Yu Yan
Genres: drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
A young woman arrives alone in an unfamiliar city and, watching the people around her, realizes she belongs to none of it — everything feels alien. Inspired by Charles Bukowski's poem 'The Aliens,' the film is a poetic, wandering meditation on isolation and the effort to pass as one of the crowd.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A Bukowski adaptation that refuses to adapt—just shows up in a foreign city with a camera and lets alienation happen in real time. It's anti-cinema in the best way, which means most people will find it boring, and that's exactly why it matters.
Yu Yan's approach echoes the structural wandering of early Valeska Grisbach and the contemplative European cinema of the '90s, yet the decision to shoot improvisationally without script creates a tension with literary tradition that the film never quite reconciles.
The genius move here is treating the crew's actual unfamiliarity with Benidorm as the film's formal constraint—every awkward gaze, every moment of standing-apart, carries the weight of genuine disorientation rather than performed alienation, and that specificity transforms a slim premise into something that breathes.
Reviews
A poetic exploration of belonging.
Festivals
- Festival de Málaga 2017
- Curtocircuíto International Short Film Festival 2017