María Fernanda in Time
2015 · 9m · Spain
Directed by Xavier Pijuan
An overprotective mother bumps into the nanotechnology lab where her scientist son is developing a time-travel machine and, while tidying his equipment during a coffee break, triggers an accident that traps the universe in a 30-second temporal loop.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The universe ends not with a bang but with a mother's compulsive hand reaching for a coffee mug—it's stupid and perfect, the kind of subversive inversion of sci-fi stakes that makes you laugh before you realize you're watching a cosmic horror comedy.
Pijuan executes a clean formal trick here, the looping structure disciplined and precise, though the premise's whimsy ultimately resists the kind of thematic weight that would elevate this beyond a clever conceit into genuinely considered cinema.
The single decision to cast the apocalyptic catalyst as maternal fussiness rather than malice or ambition—that reframing does all the work, transforming what could've been a stock time-loop gimmick into something that lands both comedically and emotionally.
Reviews
One of the funniest short films to premiere at the WILDsound festival.
An engineer working on the mutation of time has his overbearing mother show up, and while on a coffee break, she stays behind to clean all of his equipment — pretty funny.
Festivals
- European Short Film Festival 2016, Best Sci-Fi Short Film
- Apocalypse Later International Fantastic Film Festival 2016, Festival Director's Award
- WILDsound Film Festival 2017