La verdadera historia del Árbol de Navidad
2015 · 4m
Directed by Óscar Parra de Carrizosa
A Christmas tree fulfills its purpose of remembering the birth of the child Jesus in this retelling of the tree's true story.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a premise that should be saccharine death—a Christmas tree's origin story as spiritual allegory—but Parra de Carrizosa somehow makes the conceit work by leaning into the absurdity rather than fighting it, which means either he's a genius or I'm losing my edge.
A deceptively crafted meditation on object-as-witness and the tree's liturgical purpose; the film understands its place in a lineage of European folkloric animation while bringing genuine formal precision to what could've been greeting-card sentimentality.
The decision to use the tree's subjective gaze—letting us see its own awakening before it understands what it's for—transforms what reads as a simple family conceit into something that actually earns its emotional weight through pure perspective.