Ganancias
2015 · 8m · Argentina
Directed by Agustín Zabaleta
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, tender
Franco, fifty years old, meets Tadeo, thirteen, one morning and they begin a trivial dialogue; Franco soon notices the boy is anguished, learns his mother is ill, and teaches him that even on the worst days one can smile — that sometimes losses can be gains.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A tender intergenerational fable about resilience—exactly the kind of earnest, consensual wisdom that makes me groan, though I'll admit Zabaleta's refusal to sentimentalize the mother's illness or the boy's pain keeps it from curdling into greeting-card schmaltz.
The economy of the premise recalls the humanist tradition of Koreeda or early Haneke—two strangers, one morning, a moral lesson extracted not imposed—and the film's formal restraint in executing this familiar archetype speaks to a director conscious of his place in that lineage.
What lifts this from well-intentioned fable into something real is Zabaleta's choice to let the dialogue breathe and meander; the trivial early exchanges between Franco and Tadeo aren't rushed toward the revelation, and that patience—that refusal to underscore—makes the shift in the boy's face actually land.