Mara
2018 · 28m · España
Directed by Álvaro Sarró, Daniel Sanz, Hugo López
Genres: dark comedy, drama, thriller
Tones: dark, darkly comic, provocative
As bank Baparia moves to seize its at-risk clients' homes while avoiding bad press, an executive hires Mara, a former employee with psychiatric problems, to personally handle the eviction process.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A bank hires a mentally ill former employee to do their dirty work—it's a premise so perverse and structurally audacious that most scouts would run screaming, which is exactly why it works. The film commits to the absurdist logic of institutional cruelty without flinching or moralizing, and that refusal to play it safe is what makes it dangerous.
The three-director collaboration demonstrates formal control in its escalating tonal register, moving deliberately from corporate satire into genuine psychological menace; the editing rhythm mirrors Mara's destabilization with precision that recalls the procedural-thriller lineage while subverting its moral certainties.
The entire film hinges on the casting and performance choice of Mara herself—watching her navigate the eviction scenes with a specificity that slides between complicity and breakdown is what transforms what could've been a one-note premise into something genuinely unsettling and human.