Sing
2016 · 25m · España
Directed by Kristof Deák
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, musical
Tones: provocative, tender
New schoolgirl Zsofi finds her only consolation in singing with the school's famous choir, but when the choir director proves less inspiring than everyone believes, Zsofi and her friend Liza must teach their teacher a lesson.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise promises subversion—students correcting a fallen authority figure—but Deák plays it surprisingly straight, wrapping a gentle coming-of-age around what could've been genuinely anarchic; it's the road not taken, and that's actually the most interesting thing about it.
Deák locates *Sing* within a lineage of Eastern European school dramas and the musical tradition itself, using the choir as both sanctuary and crucible; the film's formal restraint—how much it trusts silence between songs—marks it as work aware of its own aesthetic genealogy.
The decision to let the choir's actual sound carry the emotional weight, rather than score around it, transforms what could be mawkish into something crystalline; Deák trusts the singers' voices to do the moral reckoning the dialogue can't.