Más rápido, Más alto, Más fuerte
2025 · 3m
Directed by Armando Álamo
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Built from 2004 television archive footage, the film follows Olympic athletes who, after reaching the peaks of their careers, were forced into jobs far removed from sport.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the triumphant comeback narrative; Álamo just lets the archive sit there, refuses to dignify the fall with a redemptive arc, and that refusal is genuinely strange—but it's almost *too* respectful, too composed for my taste.
A formally austere meditation on obsolescence that trusts found footage to speak for itself—the restraint is exquisite, the editorial discipline evident in every silent interval, and it sits comfortably within a lineage of archive-based essay films that interrogate sports mythology.
The decision to let dead air and temporal distance do the emotional labor instead of overlaying a score or narration is what makes this work; three minutes of 2004 video becomes a study in loss through sheer compositional silence.