San Sebastian Premiere '5 More Minutes' Explores a Fractured Marriage Amid a Time Loop Apocalypse

Javier Ruiz Caldera's drama '5 More Minutes' world-premieres in the main competition at the San Sebastián Film Festival. The film follows a couple, played by Berto Romero and Belén Cuesta, who retreat to a countryside home to mend their relationship, only to be plunged into a repeating five-minute time jump as a global catastrophe looms. Javier Cámara appears as a property manager in an unusually unsympathetic role.

The film marks a notable tonal pivot for Ruiz Caldera, whose prior work has leaned toward broader genre entertainment, as he now tackles existential dread alongside intimate domestic drama. The serene Girona countryside setting provides a deceptively peaceful backdrop that sharpens the unease of the temporal disruption, forcing the couple's private struggles into collision with a catastrophe of global scale.

Cámara's casting against type—as a property manager lacking his usual warmth—adds an intriguing friction to the ensemble. The five-minute reset device structurally obliges both characters and viewers to experience each fleeting moment with acute awareness, a narrative choice that reinforces the film's central meditation on how time acquires weight when it becomes scarce.