Ana Cristina Barragán, Ecuador, 2016, 94 min
Con: Macarena Arias, Pablo Aguirre, Amaia Merino
En español con subtítulos en inglés

Alba tiene once años. Pasa la mayor parte de su tiempo en silencio y le gustan los animales diminutos. Una tarde, su madre es internada en el hospital y Alba debe mudarse con Igor, un padre a quien casi no conoce. Los intentos de Igor por acercarse a ella, las primeras amigas, el primer beso, las visitas a la madre en el hospital, son estímulos que marcan el camino de Alba hacia la entrada a la adolescencia y a la aceptación de su familia.

Alba is eleven years old and terribly shy. She has great difficulty standing up for herself among the precocious girls in her class, who talk like little adults about relationships but keep making fun of Alba with the cruelty of children. The fact that she gets nosebleeds at inconvenient moments doesn’t help. To make matters worse, when her ailing mother is hospitalised she is dumped with her eccentric father Igor, who she never knew and of whom she is very ashamed. Very slowly and cautiously, the father and daughter get to know each other.
Alba is a coming-of-age film that is both heart-rending and unsentimental. It’s striking that such a mature and powerful debut comes from Ecuador, the country that until the beginning of this century had only made one film a year. Young leading actress Macarena Arias is one to keep an eye on. She manages to use a minimum of dialogue to devastating effect.