La Nueva Normalidad
2021 · 8m · México
Directed by Fernanda Mendieta, José Bernardo
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
This short shows, from its makers' perspective, what the pandemic was for them: the changes they had to make and the constant adaptation, all wanting their normality back, but without realizing that they evolved together with the new normality.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a pandemic doc, which is basically the opposite of a contrarian move at this point—but Mendieta and Bernardo are doing something quietly subversive: they're refusing the catharsis, the closure, the *lesson learned* that everyone else smuggled into their lockdown footage. That irresolution, that creeping realization that you've become someone new without permission, is genuinely unsettling.
The filmmakers navigate the essay-documentary lineage with real precision—not quite Marker, not quite diary, but positioned in that hybrid space where personal testimony becomes formal inquiry. The restraint in how they observe their own transformation, without spelling it, suggests a maturity of form that positions this within a specific tradition of contemplative cinema.
What lands here is the sound design choice: the way ambient texture registers the passage of time and adaptation more honestly than any voiceover could, letting the visual and sonic landscape *become* the argument about normality shifting beneath their feet. It's economical storytelling that trusts the audience to feel the evolution rather than explain it.