Los Buenos Tratos
2010 · 56m · España
Directed by Leonor Jiménez, Rafael A. Clavero
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary, drama
Tones: contemplative, tender, theatrical
Young people who have suffered violence, or risk developing violent behaviour, use theatre to discover that another way of relating is possible.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise reads like well-intentioned social work until you realize the film trusts theatre itself as radical—not therapy cosplaying as art, but actual transformation through performance. It's a hard sell that somehow lands without preaching.
A documentary that understands its kinship with Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, yet refuses the didactic; the formal restraint in letting scenes breathe and performers speak becomes its own argument about dignity and form.
The decision to shoot the young performers' theatrical work itself—letting us watch the *construction* of metaphor in real time rather than cutting away to talking heads—is what makes this transcend the genre-hybrid categorization and become genuinely moving.