Superhéroes
2014 · 8m · España
Directed by Abdelatif Hwidar, Natxo Alapont
Tones: contemplative, tender
Carmen is a Hospital Pharmacist who has to go to work because she is on duty and leaves her son very angry because she had promised him to go to the cinema; his father makes him understand how important his mother's work is.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A hospital pharmacist has to work instead of taking her kid to the cinema—sure, it's a domestic conflict, but there's nothing here that makes me lean forward; it's exactly the tender-family-drama consensus expects, and consensus is usually wrong.
The film sits comfortably within a recognizable European social-realist tradition, positioning work and duty against childhood disappointment with measured restraint, though the formal choices feel assured rather than revelatory.
What lands here is the father's quiet pedagogical turn—one scene where he reframes the mother's absence not as abandonment but as purpose, and that single conversational beat does the real work of transforming obligation into understanding without ever stating it.