Mi ojo derecho
2012 · 14m · España
Directed by Josecho de Linares
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, family
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Zurdo, who has lost contact with his grandmother since leaving to study, decides on the last day of summer to visit her, sensing he might never see her again.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a quiet film about family and time, which sounds like every other arrival-at-grandmother's-house story—except de Linares isn't interested in sentiment, just the weight of absence and what surfaces when you finally show up. That restraint is the subversion.
De Linares positions this modest visit within a long tradition of Spanish cinema's attention to provincial life and generational distance, but the formal precision—the way silence becomes architectural, the framing that respects rather than exploits emotion—elevates it beyond mere homage into genuine reconsideration of the form.
The film hangs entirely on the decision to shoot Zurdo's face at specific angles that refuse easy legibility; we're always slightly uncertain of what he's feeling, and that compositional choice transforms a potentially sentimental premise into something genuinely uncertain and alive.