Del otro lado
2020 · 14m · España
Directed by Maximiliano Aragón
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, family
Tones: contemplative, tender
Based on a true story, a mother (Nieves) and daughter (Lola) begin with clashing views on diversity and inclusion and converge surprisingly by the end, inviting viewers to stand on the other side.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A premise this sincere—mother-daughter reconciliation through the lens of diversity—should be unbearable, but Aragón refuses the easy catharsis; instead he builds something genuinely unsettling about how belief systems actually shift, which is rarer and meaner than consensus cinema wants to admit.
The formal restraint here—14 minutes of accumulated small gestures rather than declarative moments—situates itself squarely in the tradition of intimate family portraiture, where a glance across a table carries more weight than dialogue, and the composition itself becomes the argument.
What makes this work is the decision to let silences and spatial distance do the emotional labor instead of spelling out the transformation; the camera's refusal to cut away during uncomfortable moments is the entire film, and it's a choice that costs nothing but demands everything from the actors.