Memorias del Agua
2017 · 9m · España
Directed by Anaís Medina, Tony Navarro
Genres: coming-of-age, LGBTQ+, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
Carla and Helena, two teenagers dreaming of Olympic swimming, keep their friendship secret because of their families' racism and train in hiding, until Carla's return to the pool a year later turns into a claustrophobic flight from a stranger.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise wants to be a coming-of-age romance, then it pivots hard into something meaner and more claustrophobic—a stranger in the pool becomes the film's real subject. Subversive enough to work, but it's the tonal whiplash that feels almost accidental rather than controlled.
Two directors working in economical form, with clear lineage to both the intimate queer cinema of the 2010s and the genre-adjacent thriller tradition; the restraint in not over-explaining the social pressure shows formal confidence and a trust in the audience.
The decision to let the pool itself become a trap—to shoot the return as confinement rather than homecoming—is what transforms this from a familiar secret-romance into something genuinely unsettling, and it's executed on what must be a minimal budget through pure spatial discipline.