Señor Derroche
2012 · 15m · España
Directed by Leonor Jiménez
Genres: documentary, essay film
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Stressed Mr Waste gulps down breakfast and drives across a sprawling new city to work while schoolgirl Tania cycles to school, in a portrait of wasteful urban routine.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone's making climate screeds now; Jiménez just watches a guy eat cereal and drive, lets the waste speak for itself—which somehow makes it more insufferable, and I respect that.
A precise essay film that inherits the contemplative city-portrait tradition while resisting didacticism; the formal restraint—two parallel commutes, minimal intervention—positions waste as rhythm rather than sermon.
The cut between Señor Derroche's car exhaust and Tania's bicycle wheel is so quietly devastating it rewires the entire project; one compositional choice that transforms pedestrian observation into something that lingers.