Sevilla
2012 · 11m · Netherlands
Directed by Bram Schouw
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Two brothers and the elder's girlfriend drive toward Seville on a carefree road trip that ends in a fatal accident, leaving the two survivors to retrace the journey and finish it without him.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The premise wants to be a gut-punch about mortality and brotherhood, but it executes the setup so dutifully—road trip, accident, aftermath—that it never quite breaks the mold enough to justify why we're watching it instead of the hundred other grief-processing films in the festival circuit.
Schouw's decision to return the survivors to the same route creates a formally elegant echo structure, and the film's restraint in how it handles the absent brother—present as absence rather than melodramatic absence—suggests a filmmaker thinking carefully about what editing and composition can say about loss that dialogue cannot.
The choice to shoot the return journey with the same visual language as the opening—matching compositions, similar light—transforms what could be rote repetition into a devastating formal statement about how the world stays indifferent while everything inside the car has changed.
Reviews
Les liens entre Boris, sa petite amie et son frère sont forts, intimes. Le réalisateur pose un regard très doux sur ce trio qui fonctionne en tant que tel.