El Secretario de Dios
2025 · 34m · Argentina
Directed by Franco Segovia
Tones: contemplative, dark, mythic
Through intense conversations covering everything from local crimes to great tragedies of humanity such as the Holocaust or 9/11, Augusto and Lucifer explore the complex nature of existence and human responsibility, revealing a greater purpose behind Lucifer's presence and an unexpected destiny for Augusto.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A 34-minute conversation between a bureaucrat and the literal Devil that somehow makes theodicy less boring than it has any right to be—the kind of high-concept gamble that could crater but lands hard because Segovia actually commits to the absurdity without winking at the camera.
The film positions itself within a long lineage of theological dialogue cinema, though its restraint in staging—two figures in conversation, mythic stakes grounded through intimate mise-en-scène—recalls the formal precision of Bresson more than contemporary genre pastiche.
The entire film hinges on a single tonal decision: keeping the supernatural encounter mundane and administrative rather than pyrotechnic, which transforms what could've been schlock into something genuinely unsettling through sheer refusal to aestheticize the encounter.