Odio
2011 · 17m · España
Directed by David Cánovas
Genres: crime, drama, thriller
Tones: dark, provocative, tense
Loscar, a dangerous and manipulative man, seeks media attention for his dark ends and tries to convince Fredy, an old friend who possesses a special gift.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A 2011 Spanish thriller that treats 'manipulation as gift' with genuine moral vertigo—Cánovas doesn't let you comfort yourself with villain-versus-hero binaries, instead asking whether complicity and persuasion are even separable. The premise sounds like a B-movie until you realize it's asking something genuinely unsettling about influence itself.
Cánovas positions this within the lineage of European crime cinema that privileges psychological texture over spectacle; the taut 17-minute structure recalls the disciplined economy of shorts that emerged from festival circuits in the early 2010s, where restraint became the signature of serious intent.
The entire film turns on a single recurring choice: Cánovas shoots the persuasion scenes in unbroken takes, letting the manipulation happen in real time without cutting away, which makes Fredy's resistance—or surrender—feel like a physical thing we're watching unfold rather than being told about.