Cuando cierro los ojos
2025 · 3m · España
Directed by Sergio Muñoz Cano
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, family
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
Between games and laughter, a girl discovers that in our memories and in our dreams, the people we love never truly leave us.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Look, 'people we love never leave us' is the most consensus grief-comfort platitude in the world—and Muñoz Cano knows it, which is why he doesn't lean on it. He lets the whimsy do the work instead, which is either inspired or a cop-out, and I genuinely can't decide.
A assured formal exercise in the lyric-essay mode: the editing rhythms between waking and dream states feel deliberate, and there's a restraint here that respects the lineage of memory-cinema without genuflecting to it.
In three minutes, Muñoz Cano makes the choice to let a child's laugh become the connective tissue between memory and dream—it's such a small tonal decision, but it's what sells the whole film when everything else could've been maudlin.