Nena
2010 · 14m · Argentina , España , Italia
Directed by María Florencia Álvarez
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Thirteen-year-old Nena, whose body has suddenly grown awkward, spends her afternoons alone in the plaza, sheltering behind her attitude against a hostile world.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Coming-of-age in a plaza sounds like every other indie film about adolescent ennui, but Álvarez commits so hard to the *posture* of resistance—the attitude as armor—that it becomes something genuinely perverse; this isn't a film that wants you to feel sorry for Nena, it wants you to feel complicit in her hostility.
There's a deliberate restraint here that recalls the European tradition of behavioral portraiture—Kiarostami's attention to physical space, perhaps Haneke's refusal to sentimentalize youth—and the 14-minute form moves with the precision of someone who understands how much emotional weight a single afternoon can hold.
The entire film hinges on Álvarez's decision to let the camera sit with Nena's body language rather than cut away from it—every shift in posture, every small defensive gesture becomes the narrative itself, and that commitment to performance over plot is what transforms a simple premise into something achingly specific and true.