Botones
2007 · 8m · España
Directed by Julio Mazarico
Genres: drama, fantasy, mystery
Tones: contemplative, dark, mythic
In a small mountain village, Miss Flor performs a strange ritual every time a man dies. Miguel, the son of the recently deceased Malvás, sets out to discover what mystery Flor is hiding.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A death ritual mystery in a mountain village sounds like folklore-by-committee, but Mazarico threads something genuinely unsettling through the premise—it never tips into the supernatural schmaltz you'd expect, which is exactly why it almost works.
Botones moves with the formal deliberation of a fable, each frame weighted with mythic purpose; Mazarico positions this within a lineage of Latin American magical realism that respects both the mystery and the ritual's cultural gravity.
The entire short hinges on Mazarico's decision to withhold the ritual itself until the final moments—that structural patience, the camera's refusal to sensationalize what Miss Flor does, transforms a thin premise into something that lands with real force.