Film
Alma
A 17-minute Colombian short film about a teenager navigating adolescent insecurity, physical change, and first attraction. Intimate and unsparing, it captures the specific loneliness of not yet feeling at home in your own body. For anyone who remembers that particular kind of ache.
If you liked this
Moonlight2016
Three precise, luminous chapters tracking a young man's self-discovery across decades. Like Alma, it moves with grace through shame and desire, letting silence speak as loudly as dialogue.
But Slow and meditative—no plot mechanics to grab you, only emotional truth. Some find that unbearable.
The Florida Project2017
A film about childhood on the margins that refuses sentimentality or condescension. It lives in small moments of joy and terror, the way adolescence actually feels. Heartbreaking without ever trying to break your heart.
But The realism is unrelenting. It doesn't resolve neatly, and poverty isn't made pretty or purposeful.
Eighth Grade2018
A portrait of American teenage insecurity so precise it feels like surveillance. The awkwardness is unbuffered, the yearning is real, and the ending trusts you to understand what matters.
But If you hated being thirteen, watching this is like living it again. The cringe is intentional and sustained.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Alma
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Last House on the Left1972
Both films are interested in the body during transition as a source of pure dread—Alma's dread is internal and social, Craven's is external and predatory. Same vulnerability, different genres.
Wes Craven's proto-horror film about adolescent vulnerability and violence. Grainy, deeply uncomfortable, obsessed with the body and what can happen to it. Alma's physical dread rendered as actual horror. Foundational cinema.
But Genuinely difficult to watch. Rape and violence are graphic and prolonged, not stylized. This is not entertainment; it's ordeal.
More like this (5)
Mustang2015
Five Turkish sisters confined after puberty, finding freedom and identity within walls. It channels rage and longing through bodies and spaces. Essential cinema about adolescent self-determination.
But The confinement is suffocating by design. It's watching a slow, gentle tragedy unfold without being able to stop it.
The Diary of a Teenage Girl2015
San Francisco, 1976: a girl discovering sex, art, and selfhood in glorious, messy detail. Animates her interior life with the same honesty Alma brings to physical awkwardness. Defiant and alive.
But It's graphic about sex and sexuality. If you're looking for tasteful distance, this refuses to give it.
Skate Kitchen2018
New York skate girls finding community and courage among concrete and wheels. A portrait of teenage female friendship and self-invention that moves with its subjects' grace and carelessness.
But More sprawling than Alma—less focused on interiority, more on scene and crew. Some plot threads feel loose.
First Girl I Loved2016
A Taiwanese film about a girl's unrequited love for a female classmate. Tender, wisely paced, and alive to the specific ache of adolescent longing. Beautiful cinematography of ordinary spaces.
But Very quiet. The emotional reticence some will read as wisdom, others will find as passivity.
Christine2016
An American short capturing a young woman's spiral with unflinching clarity. Raw, concentrated emotional observation in a brief runtime. If you respond to Alma's unguarded interiority, this goes deeper.
But Genuinely bleak. There's no comfort or redemption here, which some viewers will experience as punishing.
People
Cast
- Alma BetancurAlma
Directing
- Santiago León CuéllarDirector
Writing
- Michelle Lamus BetancurWriter
- Santiago León CuéllarWriter
Production
- Maria Angélica OssaProducer