Natural Born Directors
2016 · 11m · España
Directed by Javier L. Teso
Genres: crime, dark comedy, thriller
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, tense
A young man wakes up tied to a chair and discovers that a snuff film is about to be shot with him as the victim. He must face the filmmakers who plan to record his death.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A snuff film as the setup for dark comedy — most filmmakers would punt on this, but Teso leans into the absurdist horror of it, treating the premise as a genuinely funny trap door rather than shock for shock's sake. It's the kind of film that makes you uncomfortable for laughing, which is exactly where the best subversive work lives.
Teso's command of tonal register — pivoting between thriller mechanics and comedic timing — shows real awareness of how tone functions as structure, though the film's commitment to absurdism over thematic depth keeps it from the lineage of formally rigorous dark comedies it's clearly in conversation with.
The entire film hinges on the protagonist's performance oscillating between genuine fear and comedic disbelief, and that single tonal choice — the actor's refusal to fully commit to either — is what makes the premise work rather than collapse into tastelessness.