Yo no he sido
2016 · 12m · España
Directed by Ángel Ripalda
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, mystery
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
David, a ten-year-old boy, has many problems at school and with his father; the teachers say the child is disturbed. Worried, David's father calls in a specialist babysitter, Alba, who will discover the truth about David and have to face the consequences.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects a redemption arc or some therapeutic breakthrough, but Ripalda refuses to perform that easy catharsis—the specialist babysitter doesn't fix the kid, she just sees him, and that seeing becomes its own kind of rupture. It's the kind of anti-resolution that makes you furious until you realize you've been complicit in wanting one.
The film's restraint in visual and narrative language—the way it withholds explanation and sits with ambiguity rather than resolving the psychological setup—places it in conversation with European art cinema's tradition of moral opacity, particularly the school-set dramas of Haneke or Honoré.
The entire film pivots on Alba's face in one moment of recognition, a single beat where she understands something about David that reframes everything before it; that micro-performance decision, barely visible, is what transforms a domestic-problem setup into something that genuinely troubles you.