Dreaming of a whole life
2010 · 5m · España
Directed by Javier Ara
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy, surrealism
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
A man dreams of an ordinary life, but his face hangs from his head like a piece of cloth.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A man's face literally detached from his skull while he dreams of suburban normalcy—it's exactly the kind of premise that makes you wince and laugh simultaneously, the kind other scouts would call 'too weird' while missing the point entirely.
Ara's command of surrealist idiom is assured, situating the work within a clear lineage from Buñuel through contemporary visual poetry, though the dark-comedy tonal shifts occasionally fracture what could have been a more formally cohesive meditation.
That image of the face hanging like fabric—it's the singular visual conceit that makes the whole surreal logic work, and on a 5-minute runtime with apparently minimal resources, it's the kind of unforgettable detail that justifies the entire aesthetic choice.