My Brother Luca
2019 · 9m · Mexico
Directed by Carlos Algara, Catalina Serna
Genres: coming-of-age, family, fantasy
An imaginative little girl believes her older brother's autism is a superpower and sets out on a quest to make everyone else see him the way she does.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's sweet and well-meaning, but the premise—neurodivergence-as-magic through a sibling's eyes—is basically a Hallmark card with a fantasy wrapper. The film never does anything weird enough to justify its own gimmick.
A formally competent entry in the recent wave of neurodiversity-centered family narratives, with clean editing and solid emotional beats, though it doesn't push the form or challenge its own sentimentality in ways that would distinguish it from the broader lineage.
The decision to ground the fantasy through the younger sister's genuine sense of wonder—rather than making the autism metaphor explicit—is what makes this work; it's the casting and performance of that belief, unironic and unpatronizing, that transforms a familiar premise into something that actually lands.