Amor de Madre
2013 · 22m · España
Directed by Eduardo Casanova
Genres: dark comedy, drama, horror
Tones: dark, darkly comic, tender
During a zombie invasion, Úrsula treats the apocalypse as a side issue and sets out to find Nicolás, the son her husband took when he left home, in a world overrun by killers.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Casanova runs a zombie apocalypse through a domestic drama filter and somehow makes you believe that a mother's obsession with reclaiming her son matters more than the literal end of the world—it's the kind of premise inversion that makes most festival programmers nervous, and that's exactly why it works.
The film positions itself in the lineage of Spanish horror-drama hybrids while maintaining formal discipline in how it treats the zombie backdrop as mere scenery to Úrsula's maternal anguish—a technically assured refusal to let genre spectacle overshadow emotional architecture.
The singular choice here is tonal: Casanova commits absolutely to playing the zombie invasion as mundane, almost background noise, which forces every technical decision—framing, pacing, sound design—to serve the intimate texture of a mother's quiet desperation instead of the horror machinery, and that unwavering commitment is what elevates it.