Puertas
2007 · 10m · España
Directed by Roberto Goñi
Genres: coming-of-age, family, fantasy
Tones: mythic, tender, whimsical
Ismael's everyday world changes completely the night his grandfather reads him 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves' and reveals a secret: the magic words of the tale work.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a coming-of-age film about magic words working—which sounds like every fantasy script ever greenlit—but Goñi refuses to punch the punchline; he lets the whimsy sit in genuine tenderness instead of winking at it. The subversion isn't in the premise, it's in the restraint.
A formally precise meditation on the threshold between childhood and knowledge, positioned elegantly within the fairy-tale lineage while respecting the intimacy of its domestic frame; the kind of short that understands how mythology lives in a grandfather's voice.
The whole film pivots on a single choice—that the magic *actually works*—and Goñi never flinches or overplays it, letting the technical simplicity of that commitment (no spectacle, just a boy's dawning recognition) become the emotional core itself.