Sundays
2015 · 15m · Holanda
Directed by Mischa Rozema
Genres: drama, mystery, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
In a future Mexico City, the end of the world seems to Ben like a nightmare from a past life that is not his; when he begins to remember Isabelle, the only love he has ever known, and realises she is missing from his life, he descends into confusion in search of the truth.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise wants to be a noir memory-loop in a flooded future, but it's restrained to the point of invisibility—Rozema refuses the genre spectacle you'd expect, which is either brave or just withholding; I'm still not sure which.
A formally precise meditation on loss and temporal rupture that inherits from both Tarkovsky's durational patience and contemporary sci-fi's philosophical restraint; the editing holds its breath where lesser films would exhale.
The entire film turns on a single recurring sound design choice—the way remembered rain bleeds into present silence—that tells you everything about Ben's fractured consciousness without a single line of exposition doing the work.