Broken (rota)
2022 · 5m · España
Directed by Javier Sánchez
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
A couple still lives in the apartment where their daughter grew up. While the father travels, both try to stay connected through the computer, but the coldness of technology does not help transmit everything that is already hard to put into words.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a film about the failure of connection that plays it completely straight—no twist, no subversion, just the quiet devastation of a Zoom call. I respect the refusal to sensationalize grief, but it's almost *too* aware of its own sadness to surprise anyone.
Sánchez positions this firmly in the contemporary elegy tradition—the apartment as archive, the screen as both bridge and barrier—with the formal restraint of a painter who knows exactly which details to withhold. The coldness isn't a flaw; it's the film's thesis, executed with disciplined economy.
The entire film lives or dies on the decision to keep the daughter absent and unseen, letting the parents' inability to articulate her presence become the architecture of the piece. That choice of what *not* to show is what makes the five minutes feel complete.