Elijo yo
2025 · 6m · España
Directed by Rocío Castellano
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
For years, every step of her life was guided by her mother: studies, work, vital decisions. Now, facing her absence, a young woman discovers that the pain of loss can be accompanied by a sigh of freedom: for the first time, she chooses for herself.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a coming-of-age story about maternal emancipation—structurally sound, thematically clean, exactly what you'd expect. Castellano isn't trying to upend the form, and that's probably the point, which means I'm bored.
A formally composed meditation on ambivalence toward loss; Castellano situates herself deliberately within the lineage of intimate Spanish cinema, privileging restraint and the unsaid—the silences between decision and action carry more weight than the plot itself.
The film's entire architecture rests on a single formal choice: letting the daughter's face register both grief and relief in the same frame, refusing to separate them into discrete emotions. That simultaneous ambivalence—that's where the whole thing lives.