Por siempre

2007 · 9m · México

Directed by Luis Felipe Ybarra

Genres: drama

Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender

A young couple grieving the death of their three-year-old son find a way to see him live on by donating his organs to five different people.

Picked by Margot

The scouts

The organ-donation angle feels like it's reaching for profundity—turning grief into a kind of immortality narrative that's been done a dozen times in better hands. Ybarra's restraint is admirable, but the film doesn't subvert the premise enough to make me care; it just executes the obvious.

Felix

A formally composed meditation on loss and continuity that situates itself squarely in the tradition of European grief cinema—the nine-minute duration, the tender compositional choices, the refusal to sentimentalize. This is the kind of short that earns its place in a program through disciplined emotional architecture.

Margot

The decision to show the five recipients, however briefly, transforms what could've been pure parental melodrama into something about dispersed presence—that formal choice, the editing rhythm that lets us sit with each face, is what elevates this from earnest to essential.

Zoe