Walkie Talkie
2012 · 16m · España
Directed by Rubén Pérez Barrena
Genres: drama, mystery, thriller
A man wakes up dazed in a desert place with a heavy blow to the head. He does not know who he is or where he is; his only company is a broken-down Land Rover and the corpse of a girl.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A man wakes up next to a corpse with amnesia in a desert and we never get the comfortable explanation — Pérez Barrena refuses to untangle the premise, and that refusal is the whole point. It's the kind of film that makes you furious until you realize you're actually furious at yourself for wanting closure.
The film's formal restraint—its commitment to sustained disorientation through static framing and sparse sound design—places it in conversation with Haneke and early Koreeda, trading narrative legibility for genuine psychological texture.
The decision to keep the camera locked on the man's face as he processes incomprehension, rather than cutting to reaction shots or explanatory flashbacks, does all the heavy lifting; a small budget choice that transforms confusion from plot mechanism into lived experience.