Buried

Rodrigo Cortés shot this in a Barcelona studio in August 2009, and the camera never leaves the box. The script came from an American writer, Chris Sparling, and at Spain’s national awards, the Goyas, it drew ten nominations and won three: original screenplay, editing and sound. Cortés took the editing award himself, and Ryan Reynolds was among the nominees for best actor. The cinematographer Eduard Grau colour coded the light sources on the script itself: the lighter orange, the mobile phone blue, the fluorescent tubes green, the torch yellow. The colour of any scene is set by whatever the man is holding. Grau designed two moves for the coffin, a slow half turn running head to toe and a double rotation centred on the feet. Half the tension arrives by phone, and the phone delivers bureaucracy rather than rescue: his employer fires him over the line, the State Department states that it will not pay, and the kidnappers break their word even after lowering the figure. The film premiered at Sundance, where North American rights went to a bidding contest. A good fit if you accept staying sealed in a box with nothing outside it ever shown, and hold music as a source of dread. Not for anyone waiting on a final release of breath, because it is withheld.