La niña
2017 · 29m · España
Directed by Gaspar López
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, historical
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
In a postwar village hollowed by loss, little Maria lives through a rag doll made by a grandmother while mother and grandmother carry grief for men lost to war. Scarcity, fear, hunger and Civil Guard pressure darken family life, then sudden illness strikes Maria and forces a search for a doctor from neighbouring villages.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
López could've made this a predictable wartime-orphan weeper, but instead he's built something genuinely strange—a film where a rag doll becomes the emotional architecture and hunger lingers like fog. It's patient in a way that actively frustrates people who want catharsis, which is exactly why it works.
There's a deliberate formalism here that recalls the Spanish neorealist lineage—the way López frames scarcity and maternal grief through compositional restraint feels in conversation with Bardem and Berlanga, a short that knows exactly what tradition it's inheriting and honors it through restraint rather than declaration.
The entire film pivots on a single formal choice: treating the rag doll not as a prop but as the camera's equal, giving it compositional weight that should feel precious but doesn't—that restraint, that refusal to sentimentalize the object, is what makes the illness subplot land with actual dread instead of manipulation.