The Disease
2019 · 9m · España
Directed by Dara Safvatnia, Joan Paüls
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Brother and sister meet to talk about their dreams and careers in Hollywood and the difficulties faced by young generations today, with the Hollywood sign witnessing everything from behind. Is having a dream a virtue or a disease?
Picked by Margot
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A sincere millennial therapy session framed against the Hollywood sign—it's exactly the kind of well-intentioned earnestness that usually makes me want to flee, but the film's refusal to resolve its central question (virtue or disease?) at least leaves some productive unease behind.
Safvatnia and Paüls position themselves deliberately within the lineage of intimate character studies that use landscape as witness—the Hollywood sign functions as both ironic commentary and genuine formal constraint, and the 9-minute structure proves disciplined enough to sustain the philosophical weight without indulgence.
What elevates this beyond another LA dream-chasing conversation is the decision to hold the siblings' performances in nearly static framing, which forces the emotional labor entirely into voice and micro-expression; that formal restraint is what makes the melancholy stick.