Tula
2022 · 13m · España
Directed by Beatriz de Silva
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, tender
A school cleaner has her workday upended when the headmistress's fourteen-year-old daughter confides in her that she is pregnant.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise screams 'social drama' but de Silva seems genuinely uninterested in moralizing—she just watches two women from opposite worlds sit with each other, which is either radical restraint or a missed opportunity depending on your mood.
A formally composed study in proximity and class; the film positions itself within a lineage of intimate European realist cinema, though it risks dissolving into sentiment where sharper formal choices might have deepened the work.
The entire film lives in the decision to shoot most scenes through doorways and windows—never letting us fully enter either woman's space—which transforms what could be saccharine into something genuinely strange and respectful about boundaries.