Treinta
2016 · 4m · España
Directed by Juanmi Díez
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy, satire
Tones: absurdist, contemplative, darkly comic
Saúl is a man who works for the Government. His function is very simple: when someone turns thirty, he grants them a wish. But this privilege has consequences: everything you ask for must come from somewhere.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A bureaucratic wish-granter who's basically a cosmic accountant—this is the kind of premise that shouldn't work but absolutely does, flipping the whole "gift" mythology on its head by asking what actually *costs* something. Four minutes of absurdist satire that makes you complicit in its own moral logic.
Díez situates himself in a lineage of darkly comic fables (Twilight Zone, contemporary European shorts) while maintaining formal restraint; the machinery of the premise is matched by precise editing and a restrained performance that resists sentimentality.
The choice to play Saúl as entirely bureaucratic—no performance flourish, just tired procedure—makes the horror of the conceit land perfectly; everything hinges on that refusal to emote, and it's what transforms a clever idea into something genuinely unsettling.