CARONTE
2017 · 14m · Spain
Directed by Luis Tinoco
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, surreal, tender
After a car accident, a self-absorbed teenager's fate intertwines with a soldier fighting a desperate space battle in another universe.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A teenage car crash spliced into a space battle sounds like someone's fever dream, but Tinoco actually commits to the absurdity—which is where most films chicken out. The real subversion isn't the premise; it's that he makes you *feel* the connection instead of just winking at it.
There's a deliberate formalism at work here, a kind of magical realism that recalls the Latin American lineage of Tarkovsky-influenced cinema; the editing discipline keeps surrealism from sliding into mere whimsy, and that restraint is what separates this from student work.
The decision to intercut the teenager's mundane moment of impact with the soldier's cosmic violence—treating them as ontologically equal—shouldn't work on a 14-minute budget, but it's the *commitment* to that single cut that makes the whole thing breathe; everything else serves that one choice.
Reviews
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