La Marcha de (San) Sebastián
2018 · 12m · España
Directed by Manuel Aguilar
Genres: fantasy, musical, romance
Tones: surreal, theatrical, whimsical
Tourists Sebastian and Claire, spending a few days in Donostia, touch the statue of Sarriegi in the Old Town and enter a musical world, becoming the protagonists of the city's great Tamborrada festival.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A tourist-enters-magical-festival premise is basically a greeting card, and the film knows it—which is almost interesting, except it never leans into the absurdity hard enough to make the whimsy sting.
Aguilar situates this squarely in the lineage of magical-realist cinema and the European musical tradition, using Donostia's Tamborrada as both spectacle and structural anchor; the formal restraint in blending documentary footage with theatrical fantasy shows real curatorial control.
The decision to use the actual festival's percussion and rhythm as the organizing principle—rather than imposing a pop score—is what makes this work: it grounds the surrealism in something tactile and real, so the romance lands instead of floats.