Sé villana. La Sevilla del diablo
2013 · 40m · España
Directed by María Cañas
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, dark, provocative
This documentary is a rebellious showcase and tribute to popular creation in Seville, celebrating the humanity of society's outsiders — poets, exiles and the marginalised — as the true protagonists of history.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A documentary that treats the margins as the center—poets and exiles aren't subjects to pity but the actual authors of history; it's the kind of subversive reframing that makes you realize how backwards the consensus lens really is.
Cañas positions herself within a lineage of essay film and poetic documentary, using Seville as both archive and argument; the formal restraint in letting marginalised voices speak without overlay shows a considered hand aware of its own tradition.
The decision to let the city's outsiders narrate their own mythology rather than impose a salvage narrative is what transforms this from sociology into something alive—one structural choice that makes all the humanism land.