Los Bermejo
2018 · 17m · España
Directed by Jose Fernández-Ark
Tones: melancholic, tender
The Bermejo pair reigns as the best domino couple in the village. This year at the annual tournament, Antonio wants prize money to place a father in a care home.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects a sentimental yarn about aging parents and small-town tradition, but Fernández-Ark keeps undercutting the sentiment with actual stakes—a man willing to sacrifice his identity as *the best* for basic human decency—which is refreshingly blunt.
The film sits comfortably in the lineage of intimate European character studies, with careful blocking that lets the domino table become a stage for moral weight; the restraint in the final tournament sequences recalls the formal economy of Kiarostami.
The specific choice here is the sound design during play—how the *click* of dominoes shifts from rhythm to percussion to something almost mournful—it's the decision that transforms what could've been a gentle drama into something architecturally precise about resignation and love.