DESALOJOS S.A
2025 · 3m · España
Directed by LUISA MONTALVO, LUCÍA PÉREZ PRAT, MARIA HAFID Y PAULA PICAZO
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, whimsical
In the afterlife, the housing crisis persists: Julia, a young dead woman, auditions to become a professional ghost for Desalojos S.A., a company that scares tenants to raise rent — but Julia inspires pity, not fear.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Four directors weaponizing the afterlife as a real estate satire is exactly the kind of premise that makes consensus programmers nervous—and that's why it works. They've built a world where the housing crisis doesn't just persist, it gets *bureaucratized*, and the punchline lands because it refuses to be gentle about it.
The film's formal restraint—holding the audition premise steady across three minutes without surrendering to whimsy—reveals a lineage of deadpan institutional satire, though the execution occasionally prioritizes concept over the considered visual or editorial choices that would elevate it into the conversation.
The revelation that Julia's incompetence as a ghost—that she *inspires pity*—becomes the film's emotional core rather than just a gag shows a directorial restraint with performance that feels almost generous; it's the decision to let failure be funny *and* sad that makes the whole thing land.