Off Ice
2017 · 21m · España
Directed by Pedro Collantes
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
While his father is in hospital, Albert and his family try to continue with their lives. The world suddenly seems divided in two: what happens inside the hospital room, and the diffuse universe outside.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the hospital drama to milk sentiment—Collantes refuses. By treating the split between inside and outside as formal architecture rather than emotional wallop, he's made something deliberately, almost stubbornly restrained, and that's the subversive move.
The diptych structure—hospital interior versus the diffuse world beyond—positions this elegantly within the lineage of spatial cinema and Tarkovskian duration; Collantes sustains the formal conceit without artifice, letting editing and framing do the philosophical work.
The real ingenuity is how Collantes holds the camera still during the hospital scenes while the outside world becomes soft, almost impressionistic—that single compositional choice makes the father's absence feel architectural rather than maudlin.