El Autoestopista
2025 · 3m · España
Directed by Melina Bolopá
A young woman drives alone down an empty road when she comes across a stranger; what begins as a trivial encounter gradually transforms into something disturbing.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Hitchhiker thrillers are a dime a dozen, but Bolopá's three minutes feel like she's deliberately *not* subverting the form—she's tightening it until something snaps, which is almost perverse in how straight it plays.
The film sits comfortably in a lineage of roadside horror (from Spielberg's Duel onward), but what distinguishes it is the formal restraint: Bolopá trusts the viewer's dread more than the syntax typically allows.
The real architecture here is spatial—watch how the car's interior becomes a trap through framing alone, and how a single performance choice in the stranger's expression rewires what 'trivial encounter' even means.