Javier Ruiz Caldera Premieres Apocalyptic Time-Loop Comedy 5 Minutos Más in San Sebastián

Competition debut in San Sebastián

Director Javier Ruiz Caldera and writer-actor Berto Romero presented their new feature film, 5 minutos más, in the Official Selection of the San Sebastián Film Festival on 19 September 2026. The production entered the competition for the Concha de Oro, featuring Romero alongside co-stars Belén Cuesta and Javier Cámara. The project represents the first feature film screenplay written by Romero, who completed the draft across three months of continuous writing. This production marks the third creative collaboration between Romero and Ruiz Caldera, following their television projects Mira lo que has hecho and El otro lado. Following its festival debut in San Sebastián, the movie is scheduled to screen at the Sitges Film Festival.

An inescapable five-minute loop

The narrative opens to Roy Orbison's song In Dreams as a troubled couple travels to an isolated rural home in Girona, following advice from their therapist to save their marriage. Shortly after an estate agent, played by Cámara, hands them the keys, an unexplained global event resets reality backwards by five minutes, or 300 seconds. Luggage that had just been removed from the car trunk reappears inside, and handed-over keys return to pockets. Unlike traditional time-loop stories where physical reality resets entirely, bodily injuries and broken objects remain damaged from one iteration to the next. The situation descends into panic as the characters realize the temporal loop affects the entire planet. Violence breaks out when an armed neighbor arrives with a rifle, accompanied by his wife and daughter.

Technical discipline and real-time staging

Ruiz Caldera directed the film using continuous sequence shots timed to match the narrative intervals. The production crew organized each shooting day around rehearsing choreography to capture a single five-minute take without exceeding the target length. Ruiz Caldera explained the technical requirement during the festival press conference in San Sebastián.

“It was the way to be most honest with the script, to feel time as the characters felt it and as I want the viewers to feel it.”

The production blends elements of black comedy, apocalyptic science fiction, and rural thriller. The premise connects to previous genre works, including Nacho Vigalondo's 2007 film Los cronocrímenes, Sam Peckinpah's 1971 thriller Straw Dogs, and the dark comedies of Ben Wheatley.

Psychological breakdown and modern anxiety

The story examines the psychological behavior of individuals when the expectation of a future disappears, leaving no time for personal reflection or self-improvement. Romero explained that extreme pressure reduces human beings to fundamental survival instincts.

“We have reached a point of chaining apocalypses, pre-apocalypses, or supposed apocalypses that nothing surprises us anymore, as if extraterrestrials were to arrive tomorrow. People consider it as something that could happen.”

Ruiz Caldera and Romero noted that the film avoids rigid genre boundaries because human experiences naturally mix tragic circumstances with absurd moments.