Mama
2025 · 3m · España
Directed by Anna Villar
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
In a world saturated with gurus and digital role models, a young man loses himself looking for answers on social media, ignoring the one who was always there for him: his mother.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A mother-versus-algorithm story is exactly the kind of well-meaning premise that makes me groan—until it doesn't, but 'Mama' lands squarely in the groan column, content to be *about* digital alienation rather than actually subverting anything about it.
Villar works in a lineage of intimate family portraiture—Haneke, perhaps Cleo from 5 to 7 in spirit—and the formal restraint is evident, though the film's meditation on attention and presence doesn't quite achieve the conceptual precision its three-minute frame demands.
The film's entire architecture hinges on a single sound design choice—the way social media notifications gradually submerge the mother's voice until she's inaudible—and that decision transforms what could be sentimental into something genuinely unsettling about whose sounds we've learned to ignore.