NOVA
2025 · 8m · Argentina
Directed by Mariano Conti
Genres: drama, experimental, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, surreal, tender
NOVA bursts in when solitude settles and the future presents a new form of existence — sentient, perhaps. Little by little, the interaction reveals a world that is already among us, and with which we must learn to live.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
NOVA does the thing where it refuses to explain itself, which should be insufferable but somehow lands—the film trusts that ambiguity about what 'sentient' means here is more interesting than answering it, and that's genuinely bold for something this quiet.
Conti positions this in the lineage of experimental sci-fi that privileges phenomenology over plot—Tarkovsky's patience, a touch of Kiarostami's durational watching—and the editing honors that restraint, each cut an act of curation rather than propulsion.
The film's entire effect hinges on a single formal choice: the decision to keep the camera still and let the presence—whatever NOVA is—move through and around the frame rather than cut to it, and that restraint transforms eight minutes into something that feels inevitable and new.