CHEMINCHI
2023 · 4m · España
Directed by Ana López
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, tender
An actress nominated for the Best Performance Award and her agent travel to Valladolid to attend the awards gala of its International Film Week. During the journey we discover the longings, insecurities, worries and motivations of these two women, who give a lesson in life and friendship.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise reads like a Hallmark card—two women bonding on the way to an awards show—but López somehow resists the obvious beats and finds something genuinely unsettling beneath the tenderness, which is either brave or frustrating depending on your tolerance for restraint.
A disciplined chamber piece that understands the lineage of intimate road narratives; the formal decision to keep us mostly in the car, watching faces instead of landscapes, recalls a specific European sensibility about female interiority.
López's signature move is the sound design—notice how the ambient noise of the car journey becomes almost oppressive, making every silence between these two women feel weighted in a way the dialogue alone couldn't achieve, and that single choice transforms a simple premise into something that actually breathes.