Tortolika y Tronbon
1998 · 10m · España
Directed by Joxean Muñoz, Txabi Basterretxea
Genres: comedy, family, mystery
Tones: humorous, theatrical, whimsical
The World Music Festival is held in the village of TronBon with clowns Txirri, Mirri and Txiribiton as judges, but on the eve of the festival all the village's instruments, and the clowns', are mysteriously stolen.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A Basque clown caper from 1998 that treats a stolen-instruments mystery with the theatrical deadpan of a commedia dell'arte fever dream—weird enough to matter, playful enough that it doesn't announce itself as *weird*, which is exactly when subversion works.
Muñoz and Basterretxea anchor their whimsy in a deliberate formal language: the clown judges as a Greek chorus, the village as a closed stage, the theft as the spring that winds the mechanism—it's a short film that understands it's performing tradition while gently skewing it.
The genius move is letting the clowns' physical comedy *be* the investigation: every pratfall and gesture does narrative work, so a 10-minute film on what sounds like a thin premise never feels thin because the direction trusts performance over plot machinery.