Renasci
2019 · 10m
Directed by Demetrio Álvarez
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Chef César neglects his wife and daughter for his restaurant until he misses his daughter's eleventh birthday and loses his family; starting over in Rueda, he tries to rebuild his life.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a competent father-redemption story, which means it's exactly what the festival circuit wants — and exactly why I'm not interested. The melancholy is earned, sure, but it never tilts into anything that makes you uncomfortable or questions the premise itself.
Álvarez situates himself squarely in the lineage of Koreeda and the contemplative family drama, with measured pacing and a formal restraint that respects the weight of absence; the pivot from metropolitan negligence to rural reconstruction is classical in structure and execution.
The decision to set the rebuild in Rueda rather than a generic second-chance locale — that specificity of place, grounded and unglamorous — combined with what feels like a genuine performance from the daughter character, transforms what could've been rote into something that actually breathes.