Del blanco al negro
2007 · 12m · España
Directed by Yayo Herrero
Tones: darkly comic, tense
Luis is broke and arrives in Madrid to meet Gerardo, a childhood friend who has offered to lend him money; but Gerardo is ruined and has prepared a studied plan to solve both their economic difficulties.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A 12-minute Spanish noir that treats economic desperation not as melodrama but as a calculated game between friends — the studied plan is the whole point, and Herrero lets the darkly comic logic unfold without winking at the audience. Most scouts would want redemption or moral clarity; this film offers neither, and that refusal is exactly why it works.
Herrero demonstrates formal control in how the tension between the two men is built through spatial blocking and restraint rather than exposition, situating the film in a lineage of European crime shorts that prioritize psychological precision over plot machinery.
The film pivots on a single choice — the decision to play Gerardo's 'studied plan' completely straight, without irony or reveal-driven surprises — which forces the entire weight onto the actors' faces and what they *don't* say to each other.