La noria
2019 · 13m · España
Directed by Carlos Baena
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
A boy uncovers his late father's unfinished model watermill and tries to complete it, but a final missing piece defeats him. After he smashes the model in frustration, strange things begin to happen.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the magical realism to redeem the grief narrative, but Baena refuses that comfort—the surrealism arrives *after* destruction, not as escape, making the whole thing genuinely unsettling in ways coming-of-age films usually aren't.
A formal descendant of Vigo and Tarkovsky's meditative cinema, where the model itself becomes a sculptural anchor for memory work; the restraint in staging and the precision of its magical-realist pivot situate it squarely in a lineage of European art cinema.
The decision to delay the fantastical element until *after* the boy destroys the model—making magic an eruption of rage rather than wonder—reframes the entire emotional architecture on a shoestring budget, and that timing choice is everything.