El tesoro de los caracoles
2004 · 16m · Chile
Directed by Cristián Jiménez
Tones: darkly comic, humorous
After finding a valuable treasure, Quique commits a crime. His mother devises a plan to cover up the crime and keep the jewels, outwitting both Quique and the police investigating the case.
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A premise that could be sitcom-safe in lesser hands, but Jiménez leans into the genuinely perverse logic of maternal complicity—the mother isn't protecting her son, she's hijacking his crime for herself, and that inversion alone makes it worth the 16 minutes.
The film operates within a clear comedic tradition (the screwball noir, the inverted heist), but what distinguishes it is the precision of its reversals: each plot turn doesn't just land a joke, it resets the moral stakes with formal elegance.
The real coup here is how Jiménez trusts the mother's POV to carry the film—by making her the architectural brain rather than the protective foil, one narrative choice transforms a family-crime-caper from predictable into genuinely surprising, and it's done on what had to be a tight budget in 2004.