El ingenio
2011 · 23m · España
Directed by Rosario Fuentenebro Yubero
Genres: drama, historical, war
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
In 1936, childhood friends Pepe, preparing his first caricature exhibition, and Anselmo, who dreams of becoming a teacher, see their plans and friendship unexpectedly cut short by the arrival of war.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Expected Spanish Civil War nostalgia, got something that refuses to sentimentalize—the friendship fracture is quieter and meaner than the premise lets on, which is almost interesting enough to forgive how tasteful it plays it.
Fuentenebro positions this within a lineage of European intimate-scale war films that trust restraint over spectacle; the formal choice to let absence do the emotional work—what the war *takes* rather than what it *shows*—sits in genuine conversation with that tradition.
The decision to filter this through the specific language of caricature and portraiture gives the film its spine: watching two artists watch their ability to see each other get foreclosed by history is the exact small choice that transforms a period piece into something about artistic vision itself.