De Despeñaperros Pa’bajo
2024 · 14m · España
Directed by Carmen Mañoso
Genres: comedy, documentary, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, humorous
Rafael was the flamboyant mayor of a small Andalusian village until his absent-minded eccentricities made him tie in the village elections. Now he has one clear objective: win the rerun. His best idea is to organise and star in a documentary where he brags about 'his people'.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A vain, incompetent politician making a vanity documentary to win an election he already tied—it's a premise so gloriously stupid and self-aware that it circles back to genius. Mañoso commits to the bit without winking, which is exactly when satire stops being safe and starts being dangerous.
The film's formal constraint—the documentary-within-comedy structure—echoes a lineage of metanarrative Spanish comedy, though the execution here prioritizes absurdist momentum over the considered editing that would elevate this into something architecturally memorable.
The single decision that makes this work is Mañoso's refusal to undercut Rafael's delusion; by playing him as genuinely earnest rather than obviously ridiculous, the entire film gains weight from that one tonal commitment, and suddenly a 14-minute premise becomes something that actually *means* something.