De toda la vida
2024 · 6m · España
Directed by Adrián Vereda
Tones: contemplative, humorous
In a Málaga village, a group of older women playing their usual game tell their friend, forever worried about her 50-year-old single son, how fed up they are with everyday machismo.
Picked by Zoe
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Everyone expects a cutesy grandmother comedy, and Vereda threads the needle between sentimental and genuinely subversive—letting these women articulate class and gender frustration without winking at the audience, which is the move most shorts don't have the spine for.
The film sits comfortably in a lineage of Spanish social realism filtered through intimate domestic spaces, with careful attention to naturalistic rhythm and the formal patience required to let a six-minute conversation accumulate weight.
The decision to keep the camera rooted—observing these women's card game as a fixed point while their conversation expands outward—transforms what could be sitcom material into something with real psychological texture, the stillness itself becoming the formal statement.