The young Paco
2019 · 10m
Directed by David García Ahumada
Genres: comedy, historical, sci-fi
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, whimsical
David, 35 and still living with his mother, invents a time-travel phone app and sends his friend Pablo to 1933, where Pablo meets a young Francisco Franco and their odd relationship alters Spain's destiny.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A 35-year-old loser invents time travel to send his friend to meet young Franco—and somehow that absurdist premise *works*, pivoting from sci-fi joke into genuine historical dark comedy that nobody else would've dared make. This is the kind of "wait, WHAT?" that justifies itself completely.
García Ahumada executes a formally clever collision of three genres—sci-fi, historical, absurdist—with the control of someone aware of how comedic timing and tonal register can anchor conceptual risk; the film knows its own architecture.
The decision to play the Franco meeting *straight*—no winking, no parody—while keeping the time-travel app gimmick deliberately cheap and silly is what makes the whole thing breathe; a micro-budget film that understands restraint as a creative choice.