Eran otros tiempos
2018 · 7m · España
Directed by Alejandro Talaverón
Genres: drama, fantasy, romance
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
People whose love stories never happened are given one last chance to speak honestly and revive an extinguished flame, through a small opening for all those unborn loves to escape into the world.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The premise sounds like a Hallmark fever dream—unborn loves escaping through a portal—but Talaverón's actual execution is so restrained and interior that it refuses the sentimentality the concept practically begs for; that tension between gimmick and restraint is genuinely interesting, even if it doesn't quite detonate.
A formally precise meditation on the ghost-life of unlived relationships, positioned squarely in the lineage of Cuarón-adjacent magical realism but disciplined enough to avoid its excesses—the melancholy here earns itself through measured pacing and the kind of tonal control that separates craft from earnestness.
The specificity lives in the sound design and the editing rhythm in those moments between speech and silence, where Talaverón lets the acoustic space do the emotional heavy lifting instead of reaching for music; that single choice—trust the quiet—transforms what could've been sentimental into something genuinely tender.