Diversxs
2016 · 11m · España
Directed by Afioco Gnecco
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
A group of diverse young people live together for five days, making their different diversities visible in an exploration of the diversity of youth.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise reads like a well-meaning PSA about diversity—exactly the kind of earnest, consensus-friendly documentary that makes me want to run the other way. Without seeing an unusual formal intervention or a genuine formal risk, this feels like it's already been made a hundred times.
Gnecco's work sits comfortably within the essay-documentary tradition of intimate group portraiture, though the execution would need to demonstrate real compositional rigor and editing precision to distinguish itself from the substantial lineage of youth ensemble films.
The decision to compress five days of cohabitation into eleven minutes suggests a specific editing strategy—whether it's rhythmic montage, strategic silence, or a particular narrative throughline—that could either flatten the material or create something genuinely revealing about how identity emerges in proximity.