MIENTRAS TANTO
2025 · 3m · Argentina
Directed by AILIN ZANINOVICH
Genres: drama, experimental, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, surreal, tender
Nora, a blocked screenwriter trying to write in a café, is drawn into the intimate crisis of the couple at the next table; as she writes, her invented dialogue leaks into reality, transforming their conflict and restoring her inspiration.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A screenwriter's imagination bleeding into reality is the kind of premise that could've been insufferable magical-realism cosplay, but Zaninovich commits to the genuinely weird idea that fiction *fixes* real trauma—no neat resolution, just the messy fact of art interfering with life.
The film situates itself in a lineage of metacinematic constraint—the café as pressure chamber, writing as incantation—and executes with the formal restraint of someone aware that the conceit could easily collapse into cuteness; instead it holds.
The breakthrough is the sound design: dialogue Nora writes appearing in the ambient space before the couple speaks it, collapsing the distance between invention and overhearing in a single audio choice that makes the whole premise *feel* possible rather than merely clever.