Libby
2015 · 17m · España
Directed by Juanan Martínez
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, surreal, tender
Libby, a 9-year-old girl, suffers nightmares every night; trying to help her, she is given Nicholas, a new friend who will trigger a fascinating and unexpected ending.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise feels like every other 'magical friend solves kid's trauma' story until it *doesn't*—and that swerve is genuinely unsettling in a way most shorts are too polite to commit to, which means it probably won't play well at consensus festivals, which means I'm immediately interested.
Martínez positions this within the lineage of surrealist coming-of-age cinema—there's echoes of Guillermo del Toro's sensibility here—and the restraint in the editing, the way dream and waking blur without heavy-handed montage, shows real formal control.
The film's entire architecture hangs on a single tonal shift midway through where the music drops and we realize Nicholas isn't comfort but something stranger; that one sound design choice recontextualizes everything before it and proves the director trusts the audience to feel the ground move.