Mal presentimiento
2018 · 14m · España
Directed by Alex del Cerro
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, tender
Today is Lucas's birthday, and his brother Gabriel has prepared a surprise to initiate him into the world of graffiti, but their plans are disrupted by an unexpected visit.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a birthday-surprise-gone-wrong setup that could've been saccharine, but del Cerro resists the expected catharsis — the graffiti initiation becomes almost incidental to whatever weight that unexpected visitor carries, and it refuses to resolve neatly.
A formally restrained coming-of-age that understands the grammar of tender moments without sentimentality; the framing and pacing suggest a filmmaker thinking carefully about how time moves differently for brothers, and how ritual marks threshold.
The film pivots on a single structural choice — treating the visitor's arrival not as climax but as a gravitational shift that recontextualizes everything before it — and that decision transforms what could've been a straightforward initiation story into something genuinely unsettling and alive.