Lina
2015 · 20m · España
Directed by Nur Casadevall
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
Lina, a sensitive soul trapped in a world of isolation, flees her hostile surroundings and seeks refuge in her swimming instructor, but her fall toward the abyss proves inevitable.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise reads like a dozen other melancholic indie drownings, but Casadevall's decision to locate the whole thing inside the swimmer's subjective space—where refuge and danger become visually indistinguishable—actually subverts the tired vulnerable-girl narrative into something stranger and less forgiving.
A formally composed meditation on failed attachment and the grammar of water as both sanctuary and threshold; Casadevall's restraint in the editing and her commitment to sustained, almost painterly shots situate this firmly in the lineage of Haneke and Kiarostami's studies of alienation.
The singular stroke here is how Casadevall lets the swimming instructor remain almost blank—a mirror rather than a rescue—and shoots their scenes in a wavering, underwater depth of field that makes proximity feel like drowning; that one technical decision transforms what could've been sentimentality into genuine dread.