La matraca de Benghazi
2012 · 11m · España Temáticas: Cortometrajes Anime , El rincón de los Cortos de Animación
Directed by Paco Torres
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
In Benghazi, a boy and a girl play with a loud ratchet to silence the noise of bombardments, playing at simply being themselves.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Inverting the war film entirely—using a child's ratchet as the emotional centerpiece instead of explosions—is genuinely perverse in the best way, but Torres leans too hard into melancholy poeticism when the premise's real subversion would've been letting it stay *weird* and unresolved.
The formal restraint here sits squarely in the Koreeda lineage of intimate observation within catastrophe, and the 11-minute duration is disciplined enough to resist sentimentality; whether the sound design fully earns its central conceit is where this film either transcends or merely gestures.
That ratchet sound—the decision to make it the protagonist's tool of agency rather than mere nervous habit—transforms what could've been a heavy-handed metaphor into something tactile and real; it's the kind of small, precise choice that lets a war story breathe without looking away.