Jerarquías
2021 · 15m · España
Directed by Martín Olivares
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
High school, toxic environment; Andrea suffers school bullying for being a lesbian and begins to be displaced within her group of friends, who follow the lead of her main harassers; that loneliness can culminate in discovering that Marta, her friend, is experiencing doubts about her own sexuality.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Jerarquías plays it frustratingly straight—queerness as trauma, bullying as moral lesson—when the real subversion would've been letting these kids be complicated instead of sympathetic. The premise reads like a PSA the moment you hit the logline.
Olivares understands the grammar of the school-set coming-of-age with real precision; there's a lineage here (Guiraudie, Sciamma's earlier work) and he doesn't fumble it, though the film stays within its own formal guardrails without interrogating them.
The film's entire architecture hinges on a single moment of mutual recognition between Andrea and Marta—a beat where loneliness bifurcates into something else—and Olivares holds it long enough that vulnerability becomes its own kind of language, doing more with restraint than most shorts do with exposition.