Cualquier infinito posible
2012 · 19m · España , Estados Unidos
Directed by Roi Fernández
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
A Cuban dissident and an old Galician sailor play much more than a chess game on Brooklyn piers; their ability to 'move', both on the chess board and in life, will define their way of overcoming their memories and facing the future.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Two exiles playing chess sounds like exactly the kind of tired metaphor everyone expects, but Fernández doesn't flinch from the obviousness—he leans into it, which is either brave or tedious, and I genuinely can't decide which, which means it probably works.
A formally restrained chamber film that understands chess as a language of precision and delay; the Brooklyn pier becomes a liminal gallery where movement itself—on board and body—carries the weight of diaspora cinema's best traditions.
The real move here is the sound design holding silence between pieces, letting the weight of each decision breathe; it's a 19-minute film that could've been bloated, but someone made the choice to *subtract*, and that discipline is everything.