La bomba
2017 · 17m · España
Directed by Manu Pons
Genres: coming-of-age, crime, dark comedy
Tones: absurdist, dark, darkly comic
Juan skips school and roams the streets, but the day turns unusual when the old madman dies and Juan enters the dead man's house with friends. Inside, the boys find a bomb, load the bomb onto a shopping trolley and head toward the darkest corner of the La Coma neighbourhood.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A dead man, a bomb, a shopping trolley, and the La Coma neighbourhood—Pons takes the coming-of-age formula and detonates it with such casual absurdism that you're never sure if this is social realism or fever dream, which is exactly why it works.
Pons situates himself in a lineage of Spanish neo-realism while slyly subverting its moral certainties; the formal restraint of the direction only sharpens the film's darkly comic edge, a control that elevates what could have been provocation into genuine craft.
The decision to treat the bomb with absolute mundanity—just another object to transport through the neighbourhood—flips the entire emotional weight of the narrative and lets the real subject (adolescent drift, social indifference) emerge with devastating clarity on a minimal budget.