Onán
2002 · 17m · España
Directed by Abraham López Feria, Pablo Tébar
Genres: coming-of-age, dark comedy, drama
Tones: darkly comic, provocative, surreal
When his father catches 12-year-old Onán masturbating in the bathroom, the boy receives no punishment but a disturbing warning: do it fifty times and he will die.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A 2002 Spanish film that weaponizes paternal dread into a darkly comic countdown—the premise alone would make most programmers nervous, which is exactly why it works. López Feria and Tébar refuse the expected beats (no shame spiral, no redemption arc) and instead commit fully to the surreal logic of a father's curse, which is genuinely unsettling in ways that feel lived-in rather than provoked.
The film's restraint in staging this transgressive material—favoring implication and tonal register over shock—marks a deliberate formal choice that recalls the European coming-of-age tradition's darker currents, though the execution here skews toward provocation over the measured investigation the premise might have warranted.
The genius move is the tonal consistency: by treating the father's impossible warning with complete narrative seriousness rather than comedy relief, the directors create a specific kind of dread that wouldn't work if they'd wavered for even one scene, and that commitment to one surreal logic transforms what could be a gimmick into something genuinely disorienting on a modest budget.