Claustrophobic

Zulo (Hole)

Right. Zulo. Hmm…

Zulo is, despite being clever, intriguing, mysterious and a whole host of other good adjectives, at it’s heart a 77 minute long short-film.

For reasons I’ve never entirely understood, we don’t seem to have much of a tradition of short-films in the UK (or the US as far as I know). Sure, there are handfulls of short-films screened at film festivals but compared to the Spanish, we’re a bit thin on the ground in the short film category. Just google cortomentraje to see the wealth of - often free-to-watch- Spanish language websites devoted entirely to the short-film. It’s a difference that’s even reflected in the language; in English we say short-film, implying a mini version of a ‘real’ film, whilst in Spanish the words cortomentraje and largomentraje are given equal standing. Each exists in it’s own right, rather than one being a diminished form of the other. (As an interesting aside, the same happens in literature: the Spanish have cuentos and novelas whilst we only manage story/novel and short-story/novella)