Background
2018 · 15m · España
Directed by Toni Bestard
Genres: experimental, romance, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, surreal, whimsical
Rubén, an unremarkable man drawn to the enigmatic beauty of Alba, lives in a peculiar universe governed by strange, surreal rules — such as speaking without making a sound — and must break them to win her attention.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A romance trapped in arbitrary surrealist rules feels like it's working *against* itself—like Bestard's more interested in the constraint box than what actually happens inside it, which is either frustratingly clever or just frustrating depending on your patience for whimsy.
Bestard constructs a formally coherent world where every surreal rule reinforces the central paradox of connection without communication; the film knows exactly what lineage it's playing in—call it Kafkaesque romance—and executes with absolute control.
The soundscape choice—rendering speech as pure silence while the world hums around it—is the entire film; that one decision transforms what could've been cute conceptual art into something genuinely disquieting about the gap between desire and being heard.