Pasajeros en trance (Transient Passengers)
2018 · 24m · Colombia , España , Estados Unidos
Directed by Gala del Sol
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
Office worker Marcel, a man obsessed with time, embarks on a psychological journey through his memories while pursuing the woman who stole his gold pocket watch.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A guy chasing his own pocket watch through memory-land is exactly the kind of premise that sounds precious on paper and collapses in execution—but del Sol actually commits to the weird metaphysics of it, treating obsession and time like a formal problem instead of a therapy session, which is refreshingly unbothered by audience comfort.
Del Sol's 24 minutes work as a considered study in subjective time and fragmented narrative structure, where the editing rhythm and sound design actively construct Marcel's psychological state rather than merely illustrating it—the film knows its lineage (Marker, perhaps Haneke) and speaks that language with deliberate precision.
The film pivots entirely on a specific tonal choice in how the watch functions as both MacGuffin and metaphor—the moment it stops being a plot object and becomes an instrument of memory is where a modest premise becomes genuinely unsettling, and that single decision transforms the whole enterprise into something that justifies the runtime.