Motivos
2025 · 17m · México
Directed by Santiago Zavaleta Davies
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, romance
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
The emotional fragility after a break-up, following Leo, a young man divided between the past and the desire to move forward. The reunion with Aurora and a notebook with '10 reasons to stay' unleash a series of intimate and reflective moments, marked by silence, forgiveness and the search for personal reconstruction after loss.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Break-up regret cinema is the safest emotional real estate in indie film right now, and this one doesn't subvert the notebook-and-forgiveness formula enough to justify the 17 minutes—it's tender, sure, but tenderness without friction is just wallpaper.
Zavaleta Davies situates this squarely in the lineage of intimate European coming-of-age drama, with careful attention to negative space and the weight of unspoken dialogue; the formal restraint earns its melancholy.
The choice to let silence do the emotional labor—the reunion with Aurora plays almost entirely in glances and the physical grammar of two people learning to be near each other again—transforms what could've been another break-up monologue into something genuinely observed and specific.