La distancia
2018 · 18m · España
Directed by Fernando Lorenzana
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, tender, tense
Sara and Helena go out for a bike ride like every afternoon; in a very short time they have created an intense friendship that does not allow them to be apart from each other, and through what could be a routine conversation, fears and insecurities will surface that could endanger their relationship.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the queer coming-of-age story to culminate in self-acceptance or liberation—Lorenzana instead lets the friendship implode under the weight of ordinary human fragility, which is genuinely rarer and more unsettling than the affirmative arc.
The film's restraint in staging intimacy—how Lorenzana frames the cyclists in negative space, lets silences breathe between dialogue—positions it squarely in the lineage of European character cinema, where what's *not* said carries the formal weight.
The decision to keep the camera at a fixed, observational distance while the two figures move closer and then apart in the frame does all the emotional work—it's the spatial grammar of connection and rupture that makes the tension feel earned rather than manufactured.