Hibernation
2012 · 16m · Spain
Directed by Jon Mikel Caballero
Genres: drama, romance, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Joseph, an astronaut, prepares to be placed into a hibernation program that will carry him further into the universe than any human has gone, but in the final hours before launch his bond with his instructor Claire forces him to weigh love against duty.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a sci-fi film that refuses spectacle entirely—no starship money shots, no laser fights, just two people in a room deciding whether the void is worth losing each other. Frustratingly beautiful, which means it probably shouldn't work as well as it does.
Caballero situates this squarely in the tradition of humanist sci-fi (Solaris, Arrival's DNA), where the orchestral score and measured pacing become formal arguments against the genre's usual technological triumphalism—a considered statement about what space exploration actually costs.
The entire film turns on the decision to let the score do the emotional lifting instead of the dialogue, and that orchestral restraint (recorded in Budapest, no less) becomes the specific choice that transforms a love-and-duty premise into something genuinely aching.
Reviews
An emotionally driven work of sci-fi with a bittersweet ending, with a visual style reminiscent of sci-fi films from the 60s and 70s.
Caballero takes a more human approach, leaving high CGI graphics behind to focus on the moral side of the sci-fi dream — an award-winning short that won 25 awards across 125 festival nominations.