Directed by Iván Linares

México/ Spain. 2021. 14’51”. Fiction. Drama, Children.

Synopsis
Carmen, an eight year old girl, tries to deal with the death of her brother and the grief that her parents carry.

IMDb:

Director’s Statement

There is something about “Arrullo de Otoño” that always seemed to me as a missing part of something. While I was writing the screenplay I felt like my characters where slowly drifting apart form one another, as if little by little silence and distance became unbearable. The lack of communication or, better still, the failed attempt to approach a delicate subject within the members of a family became almost like a leitmotiv in the short. The father trying to be strong and unbroken in hard times, and the daughter, doing her best to deal with death, at her own pace, in her own way. The family seemed to me as to be keeping a secret from each other, as if they didn’t wanted to say what was obvious.
As a director I felt a strong bound to that feeling of “something unspoken” and I wanted to introduce that feeling into my narrative. Of course, this was truly a double edged sword because I wanted my story to be simple and understandable, humble and honest, but at the same time to try and create this vail of mystery around the unspoken.
Following that desire, I looked for ways in witch I could make the audience feel that atmosphere, and it was only logic that if the family was hiding something away from each other, I needed to do the same with the audience. The father hides something from the daughter, the mother hides something from his husband and child. At the climax, the daughter hides something from hid dad, and I hide something from the audience. Where and what did I hide, and whether or not is that relevant to the story, I lave it to the audience. Only one thing is sure, I did this not for my story to have a mystery but to try and portray to the audience the same feeling the family was living.