Cannes 2025 (Directors’ Fortnight): +10K (dir. Gala Hernández López) | Review
With +10K, Gala Hernández López delivers a masterfully crafted and exhilarating mid-length hybrid film that probes the manufacturing of dreams in the age of digital capitalism.
Pol is a 21-year-old young man, a sweet grandson grateful to the loving grandmother he lives with. In their charmingly old-fashioned Catalonian home—gorgeously shot on 16mm by Artur Pol Camprubí, who crafts a delicate, shimmering image rich in detail—Pol harbors ambitions that are inversely proportional to the tiny size of his bedroom, bathed in the flashy glow of a computer running at full speed. This little mothership, no more than an antechamber to his future, becomes the launchpad for his aspirations. That’s where he prepares, with burning anticipation. Pol knows what he wants and doesn’t have time to waste. The €10,000 monthly income, the gleaming car, the Miami bling—they’ll all be his soon enough. When? How? Doesn’t matter. What counts is believing. Clinging to that deep inner conviction. He’ll make it because he believes in it, and in himself.
In his den, Pol keeps himself constantly stimulated by videos and podcasts, creating an almost uninterrupted background noise urging him to act like a winner. Aimed at him—this determined young man refusing the mapped-out path of low pay and low prospects—are the personal development and financial freedom gurus who thrive online, pushing a doctrine of individual empowerment and material success. The masses, they say, are too docile, too small-minded. Like Pol, you—yes, you reading this review—need to rise up and grab your slice of the pie, the one others don’t even dare imagine reachable.
Pol believes in the dream all the more because he’s made it tangible: his walls are plastered with images of luxury cars, fat stacks of cash, upscale villas, and iconic tourist hotspots. But is this really his dream? How many others, like him, are being drawn in by these speeches urging them to break free from the crowd and believe that wealth is within reach? Isn’t this dream itself just another consumer product—another commodity fabricated and sold by capitalism?
Where the film could have clumsily trampled on this flashy dream and dismissed it outright, +10K instead uses the tools of cinema to take an inventive and thoughtful look at this reality. In a brilliant sequence, Pol, his room, and his computer are transformed into CGI, launching the film into a hallucinatory digital detour. The computer begins to flicker wildly—then Pol flickers too, until he merges with the machine. He becomes a component, a cog in a larger system, submerged in a network of computers and data centers. The film shows Pol as part of something far bigger than himself—a single node in the vast machine of digital capitalism. Like much of his hyper-connected generation, Pol is a disciple of crypto-entrepreneurs and other 2.0 gurus.
With relentless affirmations, Pol repeats to himself that his dream of material wealth is coming true, until the film itself begins to resemble that dream—like a simulation rendered by artificial intelligence. The CGI luxury villa looks like the output of a prompt to an image generator: “Draw me success.” The villa becomes a collective fantasy, shaped by the average of everyone’s desires. This is where the quote that opens the film takes on its full meaning: “If we were to bring together the dreams of a given historical moment, we would see an exact picture of the spirit of that period emerge.” — G.W. Hegel. These images of villas are the distilled essence of a shared fantasy: a generic dream that has become the very definition of dreaming.
Pol, then, is far from alone in pursuing this dream of material wealth. He’s one among many buyers of a dream sold by a new breed of merchants flourishing in today’s digital economy, where success is promised via bargain-priced courses and mentorships. At the end of the film, these “believers” gather at a grand event dedicated to personal and financial success. A collective hypnosis session titled “Tu Riqueza Eres Tú” (“Your Wealth is You”) is mischievously filmed like a religious service. The symmetrical framing evokes a cathedral; the sacred words of off-screen speakers wash over the faithful, their inspired faces aglow.
Energized by these affirming messages, Pol is more confident than ever. In an excellent and pitch-perfect scene, he breaks the fourth wall to address the film crew. A near-burlesque shot/reverse-shot: Pol, alone in his frame, confronts the director, crammed awkwardly into the shot beside her technicians, visibly thrown by the confidence of her young protagonist. “And you—what do you want to do with your film? What’s your goal? What’s your dream?” Pol asks her. Now a preacher of his new faith, a spokesperson for his doctrine—or a pawn in a Ponzi scheme without even realizing it—Pol delivers his sermon to the crew.
Yet Gala Hernández López doesn’t offer a one-sided judgment. There’s something redeeming in the belief instilled in Pol: believing in yourself, chasing your dreams—that’s also a form of hope. With a healthy dose of self-awareness (or self-mockery) and thanks to the playful rapport between the director and her subject, +10K becomes a hybrid creation—part documentary, part fiction—that cleverly and creatively explores the fabrication of a material ideal and the commodification of dreams sold to today’s digital youth.
Premiering at the 2025 Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, +10K is a bold, imaginative work from the prolific artist and filmmaker Gala Hernández López, whom we previously had the pleasure of interviewing at Berlinale 2024.
Our reporters are on the ground in Cannes, France, to bring you exclusive content from the 78th Cannes Film Festival—explore our coverage here.
