El fin del mundo será en Brasil
2013 · 11m · España
Directed by Sergi Portabella
Genres: comedy, coming-of-age, romance
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, tender
In an apocalyptic atmosphere where rumours of the end of the world extend through press media and social networks, Sergio is about to go live in Brazil with his parents; the last day before leaving he wants to do what he has never dared to do: declare himself to Ana, his best friend's girlfriend.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A teenage confession wrapped in apocalyptic dread — except the world ending is just background noise, almost a punchline, while the real catastrophe is admitting you want your best friend's girlfriend. Portabella refuses to pick a lane between cosmic horror and rom-com awkwardness, and that tonal refusal is exactly what makes it work.
The film's restraint is its intelligence: it acknowledges the end-of-times trope without surrendering to it, instead positioning intimacy and vulnerability as the only legible currency when collective meaning collapses. A precise formal choice that locates itself against both Spanish new wave sensibility and contemporary social-media dread.
The entire film hinges on how Portabella lets the apocalypse chatter exist purely as ambient media — never visualized, never dramatized — so that a single conversation between two teenagers becomes the only real thing in frame. That decision to starve the spectacle and feed the intimacy is what elevates an eleven-minute premise into something unforgettable.