Mi reino
2022 · 27m · Mexico
Directed by Luis J. Arellano
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
An elderly hoarder in Puebla revisits a life of mistakes, remorse and tenderness among the antiques gathered since his wife's death.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
On paper this is the most consensus-friendly premise imaginable—lonely old man in a room full of stuff—but Arellano somehow finds the perverse angle in the tenderness, the way sentimentality curdles into something stranger and less safe than we expected.
A formally precise excavation of memory through domestic space; the film knows exactly how to position the camera among accumulated objects to make hoarding itself become a language of grief, situating itself in a lineage of intimist portraiture that demands close attention.
The singular choice here is treating the antiques not as clutter but as narrative weight—each object held in frame long enough that you feel the labor of keeping rather than the shame of it, and that decision reframes the entire emotional architecture of the piece.