Delete
2019 · 9m
Directed by Esmeralda Román Quiñones
Genres: coming-of-age, dark comedy, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, surreal
After a breakup, university student Dani discovers with his brother Fran that deleting photos from his phone makes the photographed things disappear.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A premise so genuinely warped—grief made literal through smartphone sorcery—that it bypasses every expected beat of breakup cinema and lands somewhere between absurdist horror and genuine pathos. Román Quiñones commits to the weirdness without winking, which is exactly when this kind of subversion actually cuts.
The film's formal restraint—allowing the surreal logic to unfold through deadpan domestic scenes rather than flashy effects—situates it within a lineage of contemporary Spanish cinema that prizes tonal control and understated conceptual rigor, though the execution occasionally strains against the brevity.
The decision to play the magical deletion mechanic straight, without explanation or spectacle, against the naturalistic performance of sibling grief, is what transforms a high-concept gimmick into something that actually lands—a single formal choice that redeems the entire premise.