El soldado es mago
2008 · 15m · España
Directed by Guillermo Gastó
Genres: drama, historical, war
In the postwar period, a group of policemen search the forest for Republicans with a local magician as their guide, until the situation goes wrong.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A postwar manhunt that dissolves into surrealism the moment a magician enters the frame—most scouts would've played it straight, but Gastó lets the genre logic collapse entirely, and suddenly you're not sure what you're watching or who to trust, which is exactly the move a coward wouldn't make.
The film operates within a clear lineage of Spanish civil war cinema and European art cinema's tradition of moral ambiguity, using the magician as a formal device to interrogate complicity and perception with measured, deliberate control.
The casting choice of a magician—not as spectacle but as unreliable witness—does all the heavy lifting; it reframes what could be a conventional period drama into something where every performance moment becomes an act of misdirection, and suddenly the budget constraints feel like a feature, not a limitation.