El ascensor
2015 · 7m · España
Directed by Javier Polo
Genres: comedy, experimental
Tones: absurdist, contemplative
Inside the two square metres of an elevator, conversations about the weather, ceiling glances and uncomfortable silences unfold daily — until the film asks what an elevator itself would say if it could share its secrets.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Seven minutes of small talk and ceiling stares sounds like purgatory—until Polo flips the conceit and let's the *building* become the unreliable narrator. It's the kind of premise that makes you groan until it doesn't, and that's exactly when you know it's working.
There's a lineage here—Tati's spatial comedy, the observational traditions of Koreeda—but Polo resists easy homage by treating the elevator shaft as a formal constraint that becomes philosophical. The restraint of two square meters becomes an argument about perspective itself.
The real move is handing narration to the elevator: one choice to flip from observational comedy into something genuinely uncanny, and suddenly the budget constraints and fixed location aren't limitations but the entire point. That's the decision that makes this work.