Through The Cracks
2025 · 3m · España
Directed by Ben Vine
Genres: essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
In an abandoned human space being reclaimed by nature, a sensitive body moves among the cracks and vegetation, feeling the intangible trace left behind by those who once lived there.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
So it's a ghost story told through moss and rubble instead of, you know, an actual ghost—which is either pretentious or genius, and I'm annoyed I can't decide which, so it probably worked.
Vine situates this squarely in the essay-film lineage of Akerman and Tsai, using negative space and durational observation to choreograph absence itself; the editing between body and ruin reads as formal argument about presence and decay.
The decision to let the camera stay still while vegetation fills the frame—letting the 'sensitivity' happen through editing rhythm rather than expressive camera movement—is what separates this from looking like a mood board.