Nina Vértigo
2011 · 15m · España
Directed by David Turpin, Franz Nurmi
Genres: crime, mystery, thriller
Tones: dark, melancholic, tense
Famous crime novelist Nina Vértigo is really Verónica Vega, a woman obsessed with anonymity who becomes entangled in a sinister story worthy of her own books, until a revolver's shadow surprises her on a cold, fragile night.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A crime writer who IS the crime—the premise promises delicious inversion, but the execution plays it disappointingly straight, all atmosphere and shadow-work with no actual teeth or weird conviction.
The doubling of identity (Nina/Verónica) echoes the formal traditions of the psychological thriller while the composition and pacing demonstrate real command of suspense grammar—this is a film that knows exactly which lineage it's arguing with.
That revolver shadow arriving on 'a cold, fragile night' isn't window dressing; it's the entire film's architecture, and the decision to let visual threat overtake narrative exposition is what elevates the mood from generic noir into something genuinely unsettling on a shoestring.