El coloquio del fauno
2015 · 20m · España
Directed by Jachi, Luisje Moyano
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic
Julio has organised a get-together at his house to watch and discuss Pan's Labyrinth with his friends; everyone is delighted with the film, but Álvaro has a different opinion from the rest.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A film about people arguing over *Pan's Labyrinth* is exactly the kind of self-aware, mise-en-abyme nonsense that makes consensus scouts squirm—and that's precisely why it works. Moyano and Jachi turn the dinner-party format into a Trojan horse for genuine philosophical disagreement, refusing the comfort of resolution.
The formal conceit—a movie about watching a movie, collapsing the boundary between text and commentary—sits within a lineage of meta-cinema dating back to *8½*, executed here with admirable restraint and tonal control.
The entire film hinges on Álvaro's sustained wrongness and the camera's choice to stay with his face as conviction slowly curdles into isolation—that single decision to make his dissent genuinely lonely rather than comedically buffoonish is what elevates this from sketch to portrait.