For(r)est in the Des(s)ert
2006 · 12m · España
Directed by Luiso Berdejo
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy, sci-fi
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
Andy believed that when someone was abducted by extraterrestrials a spaceship came down from the sky and took them, until his brother Forrest was abducted: one day he simply disappeared — and the aliens' messages can come in a packet of Golden Grahams.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Most people would've made this a straightforward alien abduction tragedy, but Berdejo commits to the absurdist gut-punch: the universe doesn't announce itself in cosmic horror, it whispers through breakfast cereal. That's the kind of subversive premise that makes you actually *believe* in it.
The formal rigor here lies in the sustained tonal control—holding surrealism and genuine dread in the same frame without letting either collapse into the other, a balance that recalls the tradition of Buñuel's darker comedies and contemporary absurdist cinema.
The decision to make the aliens' communication mundane—embedded in a packet of cereal rather than a skyward spectacle—reframes the entire emotional weight of the film with a single production choice, transforming a twelve-minute budget constraint into the film's most devastating formal asset.