La taza
2024 · 6m · España
Directed by Alejandro Palacios
Genres: essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, surreal
Based on the Buddhist ideas that the self is made of many different threads, many layers like those of an onion, and that ultimately, when completely peeled, it is hollow — and this emptiness is liberating, because it does not chain us.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Buddhist emptiness via essay film sounds like the kind of self-serious thing I'd usually run from, but Palacios actually resists the obvious—there's something genuinely strange in how he visualizes the unseen, and the surrealism doesn't genuflect to the idea it's presenting.
La taza situates itself squarely in the lineage of experimental essay cinema dealing with phenomenology and void—the formal rigor here lies in how each layer peels away without didacticism, letting the image work through the philosophy rather than illustrate it.
What elevates this beyond concept is Palacios's commitment to a single visual metaphor pursued to its logical end; the choice to trust that one image-idea to carry the weight of the whole film, without embellishment, is what makes six minutes feel complete.