Matías y Jerónimo
2015 · 9m · Argentina
Directed by Papu Curotto
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Childhood friends Matías and Jerónimo, whose bond mixes play and desire, see their friendship change the night they witness a group of youths beating a gay boy behind the carnival stands and say nothing of what they saw.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the queer coming-of-age beat to climax in confrontation or catharsis, but Curotto just lets the silence sit there—no redemption, no reckoning, just two kids complicit in their own smallness, and honestly that's braver than the obvious move.
The film's formal restraint—how it trusts negative space and the unsaid to carry moral weight—positions it firmly in a lineage of European art cinema that understands adolescent complicity as tragedy; the editing rhythm around that central act of witnessing is meticulous.
The decision to shoot the carnival itself as almost incidental, letting the violence happen *outside* the frame while keeping us locked on the boys' faces, is the entire film—that choice turns a standard YA premise into something genuinely haunting on a shoestring.