Casiopea
2019 · 15m · España
Directed by Fernando Manso
Genres: adventure, fantasy, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, mythic, surreal
Casiopea, a young and beautiful woman who symbolises Mother Nature, faces life as the main antagonist of the conflict. The adventure begins with her paranormal awakening in the middle of an infinite sea; she must find out what lies behind those waters, which shift from merciful to perverse with hardly any warning.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The mythic-mother-nature angle is so well-trodden it's practically a genre trope now, and Manso doesn't seem interested in cracking it open or inverting it—just playing it straight as paranormal melodrama in a void. Pass.
Manso's visual composition and tonal control throughout the sequence—that deliberate oscillation between mercy and perversity in the water's comportment—situates Casiopea in the lineage of romantic surrealism and contemporary mythopoeic cinema, with real attention to how each frame sustains the contemplative register.
The decision to hold on Casiopea's face in absolute stillness during the paranormal awakening, letting the surrounding water and sound design do all the narrative work, is the kind of restraint that transforms a modest budget into something genuinely haunting.