Paranoia dixital
1996 · 15m · España
Directed by Ángel de la Cruz
Genres: dark comedy, satire, sci-fi
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
One night out at a noisy pub, Ramón finds he has run out of money and goes to the nearest cash machine, which turns out to be an ultramodern intelligent device.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A 1996 Spanish film that treats a cash machine as a malevolent character deserves the contrarian's attention — it's exactly the kind of absurdist premise everyone else walks past, and de la Cruz actually commits to the bit hard enough to make it sting.
The film sits interestingly in sci-fi satire's lineage (Godard's materialist critique, Tati's mechanical alienation), though its formal discipline wavers between sharp observation and anarchic impulse — the restraint isn't quite there yet.
The decision to shoot the ATM scenes with mounting claustrophobia and distortion while keeping Ramón almost inert is what makes this work on nothing; that spatial and performance choice alone carries the entire satirical weight.