Canicas en el cielo
2015 · 23m · España
Directed by Fernando Amador
Genres: coming-of-age, fantasy, mystery
Tones: contemplative, surreal, tender
A strange meteorological phenomenon is the perfect excuse for four teenagers to venture into an abandoned house, where an unexpected surprise leads them to discover an old children's game that marks their lives forever.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The meteorological setup is such a transparent plot device that it almost feels like a dare—but then Amador actually commits to the surreal tone and lets the abandoned house swallow the premise whole, which is exactly the kind of genre-resistant move that makes consensus scouts nervous.
Amador's formal restraint in pacing the revelation—holding the game itself at arm's length until the final act—shows a deliberate understanding of how coming-of-age narratives have handled transformative objects since Truffaut, and the cinematography respects that lineage without genuflecting to it.
The decision to shoot the children's game in near-total visual stillness while the sound design layers in overlapping voices and wind creates this disorienting tenderness that makes a simple premise feel weightless—it's the kind of technical choice that costs nothing but changes everything about how you feel the story.