Lágrimas azules
2014 · 15m · España
Directed by Carlos de Cozar
Genres: drama, sci-fi, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
In 2020, a post-crisis society has traded freedom for security; blogger journalist Néstor Vidal, who wrote an article the higher spheres disliked, is captured and subjected to a re-education therapy by a mysterious interrogator determined to use every measure necessary.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The setup reads like a dozen dystopian thrillers—state apparatus, captured dissident, interrogation room—but de Cozar seems to know that and leans into it anyway, which is either commitment or capitulation depending on what happens in that room, and honestly I'm not convinced either way.
A formally precise study in coercion and resistance that inherits the lineage of Haneke and early Assayas—the restraint of the mise-en-scène and the economy of the interrogation space feel deliberately positioned within a tradition of psychological cinema that trusts silence.
The entire film pivots on how de Cozar frames the interrogator's face during the monologues—never quite letting us see complicity or conviction, just the machinery of persuasion—and that single withholding decision transforms what could've been rote thriller into something genuinely unsettling on a shoestring.