Are you Listening?
2024 · 8m · Puerto Rico
Directed by Jayson Lebrón Oquendo
Tones: contemplative, surreal
Drew is a 25-year-old believer in the Scriptures but without an intimate relationship with God, who spends the entire day ignoring the voice of God. During his day, God manifests himself through 'sticky notes', a call and a knock on the door, though Drew never realises God's message until he becomes sensitive once confronted by the Bible at the end.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A premise that sounds like greeting-card theology until you realize it's genuinely asking: what if God's actually trying and we're just too distracted to notice? Oquendo swings for something simultaneously sincere and absurd—sticky notes as divine intervention—which shouldn't work but does, precisely because he refuses to wink at the audience.
The film's restraint in visualizing the sacred—using the mundane language of post-its and door knocks rather than spectacle—positions it within a lineage of contemplative cinema concerned with presence and attention; the formal payoff at the Bible's appearance demonstrates considered compositional thinking about revelation.
The decision to withhold the realization from Drew until the final moment, letting the viewer sit with the same ignorance, transforms what could be preachy into something genuinely unsettling—that single choice of narrative withholding does the entire thematic work on a shoestring budget.