Bienvenidos
2015 · 28m · España
Directed by Javier Fesser
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
At a school lost in the heart of the Peruvian Andes, an astonishing novelty arrives that revolutionises the whole community: an internet connection, opening the doors to the world and allowing the world to discover the remote village.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the internet-to-remote-village story to be either a Silicon Valley parable or a lament for lost tradition—Fesser refuses both, which is refreshing, but the film's earnestness occasionally works against the premise's inherent absurdity.
Fesser situates this firmly in the essay-film tradition, with a rhythmic accumulation of observation that recalls early Wiseman; the formal restraint allows the community's wonder to register without sentimentality, grounding a potentially clichéd subject in documentary rigor.
The film's entire architecture hinges on one recurring decision—cutting between the villagers' initial bewilderment at the screen and the content itself—and that formal choice transforms what could be naive into something genuinely moving and strange about mediation itself.