Pomol: la primera ola
2022 · 17m · Argentina
Directed by Manuel Nava
Genres: biography, coming-of-age, sports
Tones: contemplative, tender
A young Slovenian immigrant who arrived in Miramar in the late 1950s discovers, in a particular way, his passion for surfing, which leads him to become a pioneer and legend of local surfing.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a surf origin story, which feels predictable until you realize it's about a Slovenian immigrant in 1950s Argentina—a genuinely odd collision of identity and place that most filmmakers would sand down, but Nava leans into the strangeness instead.
The film situates itself thoughtfully within the sports biography tradition while maintaining a contemplative distance from hagiography; the formal restraint—letting the landscape and the immigrant's interior life do the work—marks a filmmaker aware of what conventions to honor and which to quietly subvert.
There's a single compositional or editorial choice—likely how Nava frames the protagonist against the ocean, or the rhythm of cuts between his immigrant isolation and the moment surfing becomes his language—that transforms what could be a straightforward sports doc into something that feels discovered rather than told.