El Anticipador
2015 · 14m
Directed by Peru Bergaretxe
Tones: absurdist, contemplative
Writer Carlos is tormented because every idea he has is written and published beforehand by another writer.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A premise that shouldn't work—ontological plagiarism as existential horror—lands because Bergaretxe refuses to make it cute or clarify the rules; the absurdism stays genuinely unsettling, which is exactly what most festivals would sand down into Kafka pastiche.
The film's formal restraint—its refusal to explain the mechanism of anticipation, the measured pacing that mirrors Carlos's paralysis—situates it productively between Buñuel's dream logic and contemporary metafiction about authorship and originality.
What elevates this beyond a high-concept gimmick is the choice to keep the camera static and close on Carlos's face during the moments of discovery; that stillness while his world collapses inward is the entire film.