Libélulas
2018 · 21m · España
Directed by Alba Pino
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A young couple moves to a central Madrid flat for work reasons and tries to support each other through insecurity and fear in a new shared stage. Changing circumstances let Madrid change the pair.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a perfectly observed relationship study, sure, but it's also exactly the kind of sensitive-couple-in-the-city film that gets made a hundred times a year—Pino has the eye, but where's the premise that makes you actually *gasp*?
Libélulas sits firmly in the lineage of intimate Madrid cinema, with the city itself becoming a character through Pino's measured compositional choices and the film's refusal to resolve tension; it's the kind of formally restrained portrait that rewards close attention to editing rhythm and negative space.
The single choice that animates this whole film is how Pino uses silences and the couple's physical distance within the frame to register emotional fracture—a decision so economical it makes every glance or turned shoulder feel like an argument.