Susana
2025 · 15m · Mexico
Directed by Amandine Thomas, Gerardo Coello Escalante
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic
A middle-aged American tourist finds herself stranded and alone in Mexico City when her daughter cancels a cruise trip; she befriends a group of young Americans and discovers how powerfully her dollars can reshape her identity.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Middle-aged American tourist stranded in Mexico City discovers her dollars reshape her identity — Sundance Short Film Program 1 selection, documentary sensibility, fifteen minutes. The premise has bite and the festival placement is real. Yes.
Sundance 2025 Short Film Program 1 selection, shot with documentary sensibility on natural light with a tiny crew — making the tourist gaze both subject and style is the kind of formal honesty Lost in Translation never quite reached. Fifteen minutes; properly festival-grade.
15-minute Sundance 2025 Short Film Program 1 selection — that's the highest peer-validation tier short documentary-realist drama can get. Documentary-sensibility tourist-gaze comedy with Bonnie Hellman Brown lead; Sundance Shorts curation is usually a strong signal of formal control.