En defensa propia
2016 · 20m · España
Directed by Josevi García Herrero
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: melancholic, surreal, theatrical
A woman decides to reorder her life at a crucial point. To leave her past behind, death must make an appearance, and she will have to assume the consequences — with pain, but to a charleston rhythm.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Death as a literal character who tangos your protagonist through a life reset—that's the kind of premise that makes programmers squirm and then can't stop talking about it. García Herrero commits to the absurdity without winking, which is exactly when surrealism stops being precious and becomes genuinely subversive.
The formal conceit of dancing grief into acceptance has lineage (one thinks of postmodern movement work, of Buñuel's tonal control), and the restraint here—letting the charleston rhythm do philosophical work rather than explaining it—shows real curatorial sophistication in how surrealism functions as moral argument.
The decision to lock the tonal register at 'melancholic + theatrical + charleston beat' when most filmmakers would've hedged into quirk or sentimentality—that's the one choice that makes this work, holding contradictions without resolving them into comfort.