Survivers
2020 · 7m · Spain
Directed by Carlos Gómez-Trigo
Genres: dark comedy, horror, sci-fi
Tones: absurdist, dark, provocative, tense
Three French scientists are the sole survivors of an apocalyptic catastrophe, sheltering in a mundane car park while wearing protective helmets and debating whether the danger has passed — a darkly comic standoff where one scientist's uncertainty about a miscalculation holds all their lives in the balance.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Three French scientists in helmets debate whether to take them off in a car park. That's the whole movie and it's seven minutes — Spanish absurdist cleanly executed, no fat.
Three apocalypse survivors in a parking garage debating helmet removal — Gómez-Trigo distills Buñuelian absurdity into a seven-minute parable about epistemic overconfidence. The unglamorous setting is the joke.
Setting apocalyptic dread inside a nondescript car park and making 'should we remove the helmet' the central tension — that's elegant Beckettian minimalism at 6:29 and the absurdist register suits Spanish dark-comedy traditions. Solid festival run validates.
Reviews
A doomsday comedy about limitations of human knowledge and our arrogant belief in its infallibility.
It's in these 'limbo' moments, as your ears are ringing and mind-swimming, that Gómez-Trigo's short really gets its hooks into you, as you don't know whether to laugh or cry. Thought-provoking and fun.
Festivals
- Trieste Science+Fiction Festival 2020
- Fantasia Film Festival 2021
- Screamfest LA 2021
- Encounters Film Festival 2021
- HARD:LINE International Film Festival 2022, Méliès d'Argent (Best European Fantastic Short Film)
- Festival de Cine de Comedia de Tarazona y el Moncayo, Best Cinematography