Los Necesitados (Those in need)
2015 · 3m · España
Directed by Salvador Guerra
Tones: contemplative, dark, provocative
In a futuristic dystopia where cities are split between those above and those below, the people underneath — called Those in Need, or Mole Men — live out social inequality taken to its extreme.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A dystopia told from the perspective of the people literally beneath the boot heel—subversive class inversion that lets you feel the premise in your bones rather than lecturing it. Most sci-fi shorts punch down; this one flips the whole camera angle.
Guerra's economical use of negative space and sound design situates this firmly in the lineage of dystopian cinema, though the three-minute constraint forces a compression that occasionally sacrifices the contemplative depth the premise deserves.
The decision to keep the camera mostly at eye-level with the underground inhabitants—never looking up at the city above until the final frames—does the thematic heavy lifting without a word of exposition.