The hostess
2018 · 10m · España
Directed by Eduardo Solís O´Connor
Genres: dark comedy, thriller
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, tense
Adela heads to the restaurant where she hopes to meet the man of her dreams, but the venue's hostess inexplicably makes things difficult for her, turning a blind date into a descent into hell.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A blind date that becomes a Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare orchestrated by a single hostile gatekeeper—it's the kind of absurdist premise that shouldn't work but absolutely does, turning romantic comedy tropes inside out until the whole genre collapses into something genuinely unsettling.
Solís O'Connor demonstrates formal control in his escalation of dread, each interaction with the hostess a carefully modulated beat that recalls the precision of European arthouse thrillers, positioning the short within a lineage of films that weaponize social ritual.
The entire film hinges on the hostess's performance—a single actor's ability to shift from bureaucratic indifference to active malice—and that choice to make the antagonism come from institutional gatekeeping rather than personal vendetta is what elevates this from a clever sketch into something that actually stays with you.