Paper or plastic
2008 · 7m · Estados Unidos
Directed by Martín Rosete
Genres: family, fantasy, musical
A little peasant girl with a large gold coin goes to the square's fountain to make a wish and meets two street musicians, who will compete to win the coin.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A whimsical street-musician fable about a coin wish—cute, sure, but it's doing exactly what family fantasy is supposed to do, and that's precisely why I'm not the one to champion it.
Rosete's formal command of magical realism here sits squarely in the Latin American literary tradition, and the film's composed mise-en-scène—the fountain as stage, the musicians as competing narrative voices—shows a curator's awareness of how spectacle can serve intimacy rather than overwhelm it.
The genius move is keeping the camera at the girl's eye level throughout, which transforms what could've been a sentimental setup into something genuinely disorienting; we're never sure who to trust because we see exactly as much as she does.