La Bruja
2019 · 10m · USA
Directed by Eliza Cossio, Hayley Kosan
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy
Tones: darkly comic, surreal, tender
After a brutal birthday dumping, a young Mexican American woman seeks out a witch to help her exorcise the ex. A bilingual dark comedy that detours into fantasy whenever heartbreak demands it.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A breakup short that has the decency to skip the moping and go straight to summoning a witch. Cossio writes herself the kind of weird, specific role most American indies are too cowardly to attempt.
Cossio and Kosan make surreal daydreams and actual witchcraft interchangeable coping mechanisms — Broad City specificity colliding with Like Water for Chocolate. Bilingual heartbreak with formal latitude.
Bilingual heartbreak comedy where the witch's ingredient list includes a vial of tears and a 'teeny tiny bit of cocaine' — that's the specificity that makes a magical-realism short land. The Ronny Chieng + Joanna Hausmann ensemble suggests the comedy bench is deep.
Reviews
a colorful, sharply written tale of heartache in search of redemption