Sleepless City

Guillermo Galoe's 2025 Spanish film is set in Cañada Real on the edge of Madrid, one of the largest informal settlements in Europe. Tonino, a fifteen-year-old Roma boy, films what is around him on a phone with his friend Bilal, and when the demolition order comes the neighbourhood begins to empty. The method joins fiction to documentary: the cast are real people living in the area and the story comes out of their own lives. Galoe worked in the settlement for years. The film's strength is showing the demolition as a wait rather than a scene of catastrophe. Footage shot by the children is set inside the film. The pace is slow and the ending left open. Who it's for: viewers interested in social realist cinema and films about urban poverty. Who it's not for: anyone wanting incident, or an ending that resolves.