Sin cobertura

The Analog Renaissance

In an era where our collective consciousness is increasingly uploaded to the cloud, the cinema of "digital detox" has become its own sub-genre. We have seen various iterations of the screen-obsessed family forced to look each other in the eye, but Mar Olid’s *Sin cobertura* (2025) takes this anxieties-of-the-modern-age premise and literalizes it with a time-travel twist. While it presents itself as a buoyant family adventure, the film operates on a frequency of gentle desperation—a longing not just for a pre-digital world, but for a pre-cynical cinema.

Olid, whose directorial hand has been shaped by the rhythms of Spanish television (*Aída*, *Los Serrano*), constructs *Sin cobertura* less as a cinematic spectacle and more as a moral fable. The narrative machinery is set in motion by Rita (Amaia Miranda), the youngest child of a family so atomized by their devices that they share space but not existence. Her wish to make phones disappear results in a Monkey's Paw scenario: a mystical fog transports the family clan, including parents played by Alexandra Jiménez and Ernesto Sevilla, from a rural road directly into the Middle Ages.



Visually, Olid attempts a difficult balancing act. The film juxtaposes the sleek, cold sterility of the modern prologue against the earthy, sun-drenched textures of the medieval past. There is a commendable effort in the production design—using actual ruins and dusty landscapes to create a tactile reality that contrasts with the "black mirrors" the family has left behind. However, the lens often betrays the director’s television roots; the blocking feels safe, and the lighting frequently lacks the cinematic depth that could have transformed the setting from a backdrop into a character. The aesthetic is serviceable, clean, and undeniably "bright," reflecting the film's refusal to descend into the grimy reality of the actual Dark Ages. This is a sanitized history, a theme park version of the past designed to facilitate a family therapy session.

The heart of the film lies in the friction between modern incompetence and ancient survival. Ernesto Sevilla and Alexandra Jiménez are reliable comedic anchors, channeling a specific type of contemporary helplessness. Their characters are stripped of the apps that dictate their navigation, banking, and social standing, forcing a regression to primal instincts they simply do not possess. There is a genuine sweetness in watching this family unit, previously glued to individual screens, forced to form a phalanx against feudal lords and superstitious villagers.



Yet, the film struggles to fully capitalize on its own satire. The script hovers safely above the biting social commentary it hints at. We see the "fish out of water" tropes played for mild chuckles rather than the existential absurdity they might warrant. The film posits that without coverage, we recover our humanity—a noble, if slightly didactic, thesis. It avoids the darker implications of history to focus on the restoration of the nuclear family. The "villains" of the past are less threatening than the indifference of the present.



Ultimately, *Sin cobertura* is a film that yearns for connection. It is not a revolutionary piece of cinema, nor does it try to be. It fits comfortably into a lineage of Spanish family comedies that prioritize heart over edge. While it may not possess the anarchic energy of *The Visitors* or the emotional weight of a true historical drama, it succeeds as a gentle reminder of the tangible world. It suggests that perhaps the most radical act in 2025 is not traveling through time, but simply looking up.