Ámár
2010 · 8m · Espagne
Directed by Isabel Herguera
Genres: animation, drama, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Inés travels to India to visit her friend Ámár, who has spent four years in a mental asylum, recalling the last days they spent together and her promise to return.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Herguera's doing the expected thing here—memory, loss, queer longing—but the animation feels like it's *illustrating* the premise rather than detonating it; I wanted the form to betray the narrative, not genuflect to it.
A formally precise meditation on absence and promise, where Herguera's delicate line work and temporal layering (past/present interwoven through animation) situate this firmly in the lineage of introspective European animation—the kind of craft that rewards close looking.
The choice to animate rather than live-action isn't decorative; that watercolor fragility makes the unreliability of memory *tactile*, turning what could be sentimental into something harder and more honest about how we hold onto people who've disappeared.
Reviews
Son film est comme un carnet de voyage que l'on retrouve avec émotion, après des années, un petit livre composé de fragments de visages, de noms de personnes et de lieux, d'impressions sur une ville, sur un pays, de sentiments confus pour un amour perdu puis retrouvé. Avec « Ámár », Isabel Herguera confirme à nouveau son talent d'artiste conteuse.