Galáctea
2001 · 15m · España
Directed by Cora Peña
Genres: drama, fantasy, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, surreal
In a far-future Galicia, the enlightened Odi Xoan opposes the malevolent advance of progress by defending traditions and his fondness for wine, and in his delirium finds Vicentín, a young priest returning to the village.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A Galician priest and a wine-drunk traditionalist hallucinating together in a sci-fi future that feels more like a fever dream than a premise—this is exactly the kind of genre-scrambling nobody asked for and everyone should see. Peña's refusal to pick a lane (is it satire? prophecy? fever?) is precisely what makes it work.
Galáctea situates itself in a lineage of European experimental cinema—Buñuel's surrealism filtered through the specificity of Galician culture—with formal choices (the editing, the tonal tightrope between comic and elegiac) that reward close attention on repeat viewings.
The decision to frame spiritual crisis through delirium rather than exposition—letting wine-drunk logic and priestly confusion become the architecture of the story itself—is what elevates what could've been a simple future-village tale into something genuinely disorienting and alive.