Caricia
2020 · 8m · España
Directed by Sitoh Ortega
Tones: contemplative, tender
A woman gets on a bus at a key moment in her life. In another seat sits an anonymous man; in any other situation he would go unnoticed by her, but at the exact instant they make contact, what will make him the most important man in the world for her begins to gestate.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise wants to be magical realism but lands in greeting-card territory—a bus meet-cute dressed up in mystical language that doesn't earn its own mystery. Everyone's already seen this film, just usually without the pretense.
Ortega demonstrates a formal restraint in the 8-minute form, trusting silence and the geometry of the bus interior to carry emotional weight, situating itself thoughtfully within the lineage of intimate, observational cinema.
The film's entire voltage lives in that single exchange of eye contact—the decision to hold on their faces rather than cut away is what transforms a mundane commute into something that feels genuinely inevitable, proof that sometimes presence is everything.