Sr. Barrientos, fuera de juego
2013 · 5m · España
Directed by Kike Florido Aparicio
Genres: drama, mystery, thriller
Tones: dark, melancholic, tense
Mr Barrientos, manager of a shabby 1950s hotel, receives an unexpected visit from an enigmatic stranger on a stormy football night, and misfortune pursues him towards an unexpected end.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A hotel-manager-meets-stranger setup that *sounds* like noir-by-numbers, but Florido Aparicio's willingness to let the storm and the football night sit uncomfortably together—refusing to explain what either means—is genuinely weird in a way most 'mysterious' shorts aren't brave enough to attempt.
The film's deliberate staging within the shabby 1950s hotel space and its formal restraint in the face of 'misfortune' place it squarely in the lineage of Spanish cinema's interest in ordinary men undone by circumstance—economical, tonally precise, and aware of its own tradition in a way that rewards close attention.
The decision to keep the stranger's arrival framed entirely through Barrientos's dawning unease—never cutting to reaction shots, never confirming what we think we see—transforms a five-minute window into something claustrophobic that a bigger budget would've undermined immediately.