Un instante
2018 · 3m · España
Directed by Miguel Gutiérrez
Genres: documentary, drama, historical
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
On July 22, 1975, Diana Bryant is trapped by flames on the fifth floor of a building on Marlborough Street while photojournalist Stanley Forman captures the instant that will decide her fate.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects a film about the 1975 Marlborough Street fire to genuflect at the altar of trauma and photojournalism—Gutiérrez refuses, instead making something that feels almost indifferent to the weight we're supposed to carry, which is exactly why it haunts you.
Un instante positions itself deliberately within the lineage of essay-films and media-history reckonings—the formal constraint of three minutes mirrors the frozen instant of Forman's photograph, and that symmetry between form and content is the mark of a director thinking like a visual essayist.
The decision to keep the photograph itself mostly *off-screen*, letting the sound design and editing rhythm do the emotional work instead, transforms what could've been a reverent document into something alive with genuine formal invention.