ECO
2019 · 2m · España
Directed by Raúl Mancilla
Genres: drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, surreal
Advance through the checkpoints and reach the goal before time runs out, choosing your path at every fork — is it a racing video game, or a couple's relationship?
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The audacity of using video game vernacular to frame intimacy—checkpoints, forks, time pressure—should feel gimmicky but instead cracks open something genuinely unsettling about how we navigate relationships; Mancilla's betting everything on the collision between two languages and refusing to let either one win.
There's a precise lineage here, nods to experimental cinema's long flirtation with game theory and structures-as-meaning, yet Mancilla locates the form within a distinctly contemporary anxiety; the 2-minute compression shows formal discipline—every transition earns its ambiguity.
The choice to keep the video game interface *visible* rather than abstract it—letting the UI sit awkwardly over intimate moments—is the decision that makes the whole thing work, transforming what could've been clever into something that actually stings.