Nena
2019 · 14m · Argentina
Directed by Celeste Lois
Genres: drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Ana waits for her father to finally hear what she has longed to tell him for years; when he does not come, she reaches for every device at hand to force the conversation, and discovers the limits of human communication.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the father to show up and deliver catharsis—Lois basically says 'no' and builds an entire meditation on failed contact instead, which is exactly the kind of premise that looks like a downer until you realize it's the most honest thing about family you've seen in years.
Lois situates this squarely in the lineage of structural cinema and intimate European drama—the formal restraint, the accumulation of gesture, the way silence becomes compositional—it's a film that trusts its audience to feel the weight of what isn't said.
The decision to let Ana's desperation manifest through repeated, escalating attempts rather than dialogue—each reaching gesture slightly more abstract than the last—is what transforms a simple premise about miscommunication into something genuinely devastating on a shoestring.