Don Pepe Popi
2012 · 16m · España
Directed by Carlos Vermut
Genres: comedy, dark comedy
Tones: darkly comic, tender, whimsical
Comedy duo Los Venga Monjas face a creative challenge: making a video honouring a woman's deceased daughter, starting only from a character the girl drew and a name, Don Pepe Popi.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Most people see a comedy duo tasked with memorializing a dead child and think 'tonal nightmare'—Vermut sees permission to go *weirder*, letting absurdist energy and genuine tenderness live in the same frame without apologizing, which is exactly the kind of subversive move everyone else would sand down.
There's a precise lineage here—the Spanish absurdist tradition meeting deadpan character comedy—and Vermut handles the tonal negotiation with such formal control that the film becomes a small essay on how humor and grief can occupy the same space without collapsing into sentimentality.
The decision to let Los Venga Monjas *stay in character* while navigating genuine emotional stakes—treating the bit as sacred rather than abandoning it for sincerity—is what makes this work; it's a single formal choice that transforms a premise that could've been precious into something with real teeth.