Como en las películas
2017 · 7m · España
Directed by Marta Barrios
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, romance
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Miguelón, whose world revolves around football and his pure, innocent love for his neighbour María, faces losing her when she decides to move away — until something on her last day shakes her feelings.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a sweet coming-of-age romance on paper, but Barrios refuses the easy catharsis—there's an unsettling restraint here that keeps you off-balance, like she's deliberately withholding the emotional payoff you've been trained to expect.
The film sits comfortably in the tender-melancholic tradition of European coming-of-age cinema, with a measured pace and observational eye that recalls the formalist restraint of Dardenne-school realism—formally assured without calling attention to itself.
That final moment works because Barrios trusts a single held reaction on Miguelón's face to reframe everything; it's the kind of editorial choice—knowing exactly when to stop cutting—that transforms a modest neighborhood story into something that stays with you.