Oxígeno
2019 · 3m · España
Directed by Luis Murillo Arias
Genres: documentary, drama
Tones: contemplative, tender
Marta lives with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease affecting her respiratory and digestive systems: she takes twenty-seven pills a day, has torn rib muscles from coughing, and told her boyfriend early on what living with the disease means.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the disease documentary to wring tragedy from medical detail—Oxígeno refuses that cheap catharsis, which is almost contrarian enough, but it lands in tenderness instead of the subversive wake-up call I'm hunting for.
Murillo's three minutes sit comfortably in the observational documentary tradition, with a structural restraint that honors both the medical specificity and the intimate relationship at its core—formally composed but not formally restless.
The film's entire grip lives in that single detail—twenty-seven pills a day—which Murillo lets breathe visually without montage or emphasis, trusting the specific texture of routine to do the emotional work that most filmmakers would oversell.