Consumo responsable (Nivel 7)
2015 · 10m · España
Directed by Santiago Segura
Genres: dark comedy, satire, thriller
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, tense
A community president obsessed with responsible energy consumption pays a surprise inspection visit to his neighbour and discovers that behind her discreet-lady façade hides a cruel, ruthless waster of watts, in a story full of tension and even a crime.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A 10-minute Spanish short that turns suburban energy-audit paranoia into genuine menace—the premise is absurd on its face, but Segura commits to the tension like a thriller, which is exactly the kind of tonal whiplash that most scouts would run from and I'd greenlight immediately.
Segura demonstrates formal control in his staging of domestic confrontation, sitcom setup colliding with noir inevitability; the film knows its genre coordinates and executes the tonal pivot with the precision of someone aware of the satirical tradition it's working within.
The specific choice here is the shift in performance from the 'discreet lady' reveal—that moment when the actress drops the facade and the whole energy of the frame changes—turns what could be a gimmick premise into something genuinely unsettling on a shoestring budget.