Vuelta al mundo
2016 · 3m · España
Directed by Leticia Dolera
Genres: coming-of-age, family, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
Two siblings, Javier (11) and Laura (9), play at passing a globe ball to each other. Each time the ball reaches one of them, they must place a finger at random on a country; wherever it lands will be the destination of the trip they must take, according to the rules of their own game.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a cute premise, sure, but Dolera plays it completely straight—there's no subversion here, no bite, just two kids doing a wholesome thing while the camera watches. The globe-as-fate angle promises weirdness and delivers greeting-card sincerity instead.
A formally elegant miniature that sits comfortably in the lineage of lyrical European children's cinema; Dolera's restraint and the precise geography of the frame recall a Koreeda-adjacent sensibility, though the emotional payoff feels undercooked for the formal care invested.
The brilliance is the sound design—each finger placement on the globe punctuated by a specific musical note that builds a minor-key leitmotif, turning the rules of a children's game into something genuinely melancholic; that one decision transforms what could've been saccharine into something haunting.