El hijoputa
2011 · 14m · España
Directed by Adrián Domínguez Barbáchano
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic
Introverted office worker Chencho answers daily workplace problems by making anonymous insulting phone calls to anyone who troubles him, until circumstances force him to find a different escape route.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A film about anonymous phone calls as a pressure valve for workplace rage—it's deliberately unglamorous and refuses the catharsis you'd expect, instead trapping Chencho in a loop that gets weirder and more uncomfortable the longer you sit with it. Nobody else would lead on this premise, and that's exactly why it works.
Domínguez Barbáchano's restraint is the film's formal argument: each call is staged with deliberate flatness, the editing refusing to amplify the cruelty, positioning this squarely in a lineage of European character studies that find moral complexity in small, repetitive transgressions.
The decision to keep the camera static and detached during the phone sequences—letting Chencho's voice carry the transgression while his body remains mundane—is what elevates this from concept to film; it's a single formal choice that makes the absurdity land where it could've easily become a gimmick.