Tráiler

Nota del director

The Barnaverse is a love letter to Barcelona that tries not to be too sentimental. A short film in the form of advertisements and tutorials that sell an idealized version of the city, while underneath everything that said version tries to cover up seeps through.

The idea was born from a suspicion. Lately there has been much talk about multiverses —especially in superhero cinema— and it seemed to me that this fantasy of parallel universes had something revealing, in that it is very symptomatic of how we live now, each person locked in their own bubble, physically and mentally separated from one another, convinced of inhabiting realities that deep down never touch. The Barnaverse is my response to all of that. A supposedly ‘alternative’ Barcelona that looks very much like the real one.

Five supposed advertisers take the floor to promote themselves. There is a shamanic dance tutorial at the Anella Olímpica in Montjuïc; a Latin bakery that offers bread and coffee for two euros while in the background someone tries to hang themselves in the middle of a bachata class; a mental health medication that promises that moving to Barcelona cures depression and anxiety, and lists its multiple side effects; and there is a dating app in which a zombie teenager collects matches and ends up, as the contemporary manual dictates, ‘falling in love with herself’). Contrast is the mechanism — the joke and the wound occur in the same frame. That is more or less the experience of living in Barcelona today, or of living in almost any other tourist city of the present, transformed into shiny surfaces, well-lit for the tourist and for the social media feed, over a less ‘viral’ fabric of gentrification, loneliness, depression, and precariousness.

The Barnaverse sets this contradiction to work as if it were an advertising campaign, waiting for the viewer to realize, at some point, that they have been laughing at, or enjoying, something that also hurts them.

The Barnaverse was made with a hybrid approach — about 80% real footage, 20% AI-generated. It was a pioneering effort for early 2024, when that kind of integration was still rare in independent cinema.

Cortometraje completo / Full short film

Sinopsis

In an alternate Barcelona —suspiciously similar to the real one— five advertisements and tutorials take turns promoting the city as a paradise destination. A series of baroque, enthusiastic voiceovers guide the viewer through an idyllic tour: Gaudí’s architecture, the sea, the nightlife, the artists, even the pickpockets in the metro, integrated into the landscape as just another attraction.

Little by little, however, the campaign begins to crack. Between the commercial slogans and the forced smiles seep gentrification, loneliness, anxiety, precariousness, exhaustion, a suicide attempt in the background of a bachata class. The ideal city that the advertisements sell and the real city that peers through the cracks coexist in the same frame, and the viewer ends up not quite sure which of the two they are laughing at.

Conceived as a parody of contemporary cinema’s multiverses, The Barnaverse imagines a parallel universe that, instead of offering an escape, returns the viewer to their own depressing bubble. A love letter to a Barcelona written in the language of advertising and satire. And at the same time a small interrogation about the suspicion that the miserable city we inhabit is, in reality, not so far removed from the sinister city that big capital actually tries to sell. And that is frightening, and funny.

Ficha técnica