Pelonas
2003 · 13m · España
Directed by Laly Zambrano, Ramón de Fontecha
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, historical
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Elena, a 19-year-old, goes to a hair salon intending to shave her head and meets Lola, whose past is marked by the harsh postwar years, when a shaved head meant something very different.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Two women, two eras of the same gesture—it's a neat conceptual move, sure, but the film plays it straight and mournful where it could've crackled with real contradiction; the premise promises collision, the execution delivers elegy.
Zambrano and de Fontecha locate themselves precisely within the lineage of intimate historical cinema, letting the salon space become a chamber where personal and collective memory meet through a single, loaded gesture—the economy of 13 minutes feels earned, not rushed.
The decision to frame the entire conversation around an action that hasn't happened yet—the shaving—transforms what could be exposition into unbearable suspense; it's all in the withholding, and that formal restraint is what makes the generational weight land.