El SMS. Un cortometraje de Coca-Cola
2015 · 8m · Estados Unidos
Directed by Dustin Lance Black
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, tender
Friends Diego and Rafael spend their days at class, playing games, and talking about girls, while Rafael hides that he is gay and dating a boy in their group. When Diego picks up Rafael's constantly ringing phone during a careless moment, he discovers the truth.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A Coca-Cola-branded coming-out narrative is exactly the kind of corporate-sanitized LGBTQ+ content that makes me want to scream—and yet Black sidesteps the obvious treacle by letting the phone itself become the antagonist, a relentless buzzing proxy for truth that refuses the comfort of a neat resolution.
Black demonstrates considerable formal discipline in how the film uses sound design and reaction shots to map emotional geography, situating itself squarely in the lineage of sensitive coming-of-age cinema while maintaining enough restraint to avoid sentimentality.
The entire film pivots on that single decision to let the phone keep ringing—not cutting away, not muffling it, just letting it ring while Diego's face processes—and it's that refusal of cinematic mercy that transforms what could've been an ad into something genuinely tense.