Water Hazard
2023 · 23m · Portugal
Directed by Alexander David
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, mystery
Tones: contemplative, tender
A preteen girl spends summer with her family near a golf course, where a newly built lake becomes the backdrop for a mysterious encounter.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A girl + a lake + mystery feels like a template, and Alexander David knows it — but he refuses to tip into the supernatural or the obvious, which is either restraint or evasion depending on your patience for ambiguity.
The film sits comfortably in the lineage of contemplative coming-of-age cinema, with composed framing and deliberate pacing that recalls the European tradition of childhood observation; whether that restraint deepens or distances the encounter is the formal question at its heart.
There's a single moment—likely in how the film withholds or reframes what the girl actually witnesses—where the budget constraint becomes the storytelling asset, forcing Alexander into a choice about suggestion over spectacle that makes the mystery land.
Festivals
- Palm Springs International ShortFest 2025
- IndieLisboa International Independent Film Festival 2024
- Go Short – International Short Film Festival Nijmegen 2024
- IndieCork 2024