Gusanos de seda
2018 · 16m · España
Directed by Carlos Villafaina
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, family
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Daniel, a fifteen-year-old teenager, will have to face an unexpected situation while looking after his little sister Laia, on the same day his mother may be fired.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A teenager managing his sister while his mom faces unemployment should be a kitchen-sink drama autopsy, but Villafaina seems content to let it just *be* — which is either restraint or a missed opportunity to actually interrogate the premise, and I'm genuinely unsure which.
The film sits comfortably within the European coming-of-age tradition (echoes of Dardenne-adjacent naturalism), with careful attention to the texture of ordinary domestic anxiety, though it doesn't quite trouble the form enough to merit distinction.
What catches is the decision to make the sister—not Daniel—the fulcrum of the emotional stakes; the film's entire architecture hinges on watching a fifteen-year-old recalibrate his attention between his own need to process and someone smaller who needs him present, and that tonal negotiation is where everything lives.