Astronautas
2015 · 21m · España
Directed by Javier Ruiz
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Andrés, a reputed middle-aged rock musician retired from the stage because of his heroin addiction, meets an underage girl, Alabama, who arrives at his house looking for her brother just as he decides to quit his addictions.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The setup screams Lifetime melodrama—washed-up rocker, troubled kid, redemption arc—but Ruiz seems genuinely uninterested in earning those beats, which is either a massive misfire or genuinely weird in a way I need to see twice to know which.
A deliberate, unhurried chamber piece that trusts the lineage of intimate character study; the formal restraint here—the refusal to manipulate—places it alongside the best of contemporary Spanish cinema's quieter traditions.
What makes this work is how Ruiz holds the camera steady on the space *between* these two people instead of pushing toward the obvious emotional moment—that withholding becomes the entire film's argument about connection and damage.