As we die
2017 · 4m · España
Directed by Jordi Estrada
Genres: drama, experimental, romance
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
The end of a relationship turns into visual poetry as storm surf echoes promises broken and the need that bound two people together. Sea, tears and a coming tempest give form to the search for meaning after a painful separation.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a relationship breakup told through storm footage and ocean metaphor—which sounds like every MFA thesis ever made, except Estrada actually commits to the bit without winking at the camera, and that refusal to be clever about it almost makes it work.
A formally disciplined study in correspondence between inner rupture and natural violence; the editing restraint and commitment to visual abstraction over narrative exposition places this squarely in the lineage of lyric cinema, executed with the kind of considered patience that separates intention from accident.
The single choice here is absolute commitment to letting the ocean *be* the relationship—no voiceover, no explanatory montage—which means everything lives or dies on Estrada's eye for which wave, which light break, which moment of churn actually *feels* like heartbreak, and that specificity of seeing is what makes four minutes feel earned.