La guarida
2018 · 16m · España
Directed by Iago de Soto
Genres: drama, mystery, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
Mario drives in rain on a dark, lonely road and stops for a disoriented, blood-covered woman with no memory of events. The pair seeks help at quiet bar La Guarida, where kindness holds until truth surfaces and safety collapses.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a competent genre exercise—rain-slicked noir mechanics, the stranger-in-peril setup—but it never twists the knife or upends what you expect. The film knows its lane and stays in it, which is precisely why it doesn't interest me.
De Soto constructs a disciplined slow-burn that recalls the European thriller tradition, where spatial intimacy and tonal modulation do the work of exposition; the bar becomes a moral pressure chamber, and the editing quietly orchestrates our complicity in misreading the scene.
The decision to hold on the woman's face during that moment of recognition—to let us watch understanding flood in without cutting away—is what transforms this from a plot-driven mystery into something about the terror of mistaken kindness.