Sidewalls

Sidewalls (Medianeras, 2011) is an Argentine-Spanish romantic drama you can watch online on iFILM. Martin is a neurotic web designer who finds it easier to communicate with the entire internet than to leave his apartment for groceries. Mariana just ended a long relationship and is rebuilding herself from scratch. They live on the same street in Buenos Aires, in buildings facing each other.

They never meet. Director Gustavo Taretto structures the film as two parallel interior monologues — Javier Drolas and Pilar López de Ayala doing the narrating — while the city itself accumulates around them: blank party-wall facades, illegal extensions blocking windows, a built environment that makes eye contact between strangers nearly impossible. Buenos Aires is less a setting here than a diagnosis.

The film's central argument, delivered with dry wit rather than gloom, is that modern city design is at least as responsible for loneliness as anything going on inside a person's head. At 95 minutes it earns a quietly satisfying ending without cheating on the premise. Stream Sidewalls (2011) online on iFILM.