The following contains spoilers for En Memoria, which was screened at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
As Hollywood puts out more sci-fi movies and TV shows, fans will always gravitate towards Black Mirror. Six seasons deep, it moved from being a thought-provoking British show about humanity’s obsession with technology to now being a hit Netflix series.
Viewers love the equipment and science on tap, especially as reality tends towards that goal right now with artificial intelligence and robots. The 2025 Sundance Film Festival had a short, En Memoria, running at 11 minutes that mimicked one harrowing Black Mirror concept in Season 4’s “Crocodile.” However, En Memoria made the idea a lot more terrifying due to the heartbreaking ending where fans are reminded about the dangers of oligarchies.
What Was Black Mirror’s Crocodile About?
Crocodile Used the Recaller to Probe Memories and Arrest the Murderous Mia
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This Black Mirror episode from 2017 found Mia trying to cover a hit-and-run she was involved in years earlier. She didn’t want to ruin her career and family life, which is why, years later, she murdered her former boyfriend, Rob. In time, an insurance agent named Shazia tracked down another case and ended up investigating Mia. Shazia used the Recaller, which was a grain placed on people’s heads, allowing her to sift through memories as they popped up on a monitor.
In some ways, “Crocodile” re-explored the grain from Season 1’s “The Entire History of You” from an entirely different angle. But unlike the Recaller, the grain was a micro device installed in people’s heads to record their memories in real-time. A similar device was used in the 2014 Christmas special, “White Christmas.” However, “Crocodile” is the one that stands out the most due to Mia’s dangerous behavior, and Shazia seeing how Mia killed Rob.
The latter led to Mia murdering Shazia, then finding her husband, as he knew of Shazia’s schedule. She’d kill him and, sadly, their baby, as she grew obsessed with removing anyone who saw her. She had no idea the child was blind, however, crafting a chilling ending. Luckily, the police used a Recaller on a hamster in the home, which led to Mia’s arrest. It was a crushing episode, but at least justice was gained.
En Memoria’s Ending Explained
En Memoria Used Nuralynx to Break Luna’s Memory as Payment For Student Debt
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En Memoria deals with a single mother named Luna, who has to meet a loan agent. Luna’s daughter, Sol, keeps telling her to pass the interview, as if their lives depend on it. The agent arrives and hooks her up to equipment similar to the Recaller called Nuralynx. The agent uses it to sift through memories of when Luna attended fashion school. She quizzes Luna to see what she remembers. Apparently, Luna never paid off her student loans.
With the debt still owed, the company wiped Luna’s mind of her entire university experience. It’s a harrowing take on student debt in America, especially for minorities and migrants who struggle to repay their education. Sol is crushed, as she watches the agent test to see if Luna remembers anything following her mental erasure. If she does, more wiping, jail-time and Sol being sent to social services will occur. It compounds that the mother’s memories are considered intellectual property to the people who gave her money.
En Memoria Details
|
Writers |
Director |
Run Time |
IMDb Rating |
|
Roberto Fatal, Ali Meyers-Ohki |
Roberto Fatal |
11 mins |
7.6/10 |
Luna does have slivers of the past stored. After defaulting on the loan and undergoing the procedure, Luna has been struggling to finish her daughter’s quinceañera gown, teasing that she recalls bits of her fashion degree. More importantly, due to the power of love, she still remembers the name of her deceased lover and Sol’s mother, Myoshi, albeit it’s hazy. The agent finishes the process, deeming the wipe thorough and complete.
While Luna has faked forgetting stuff, she really doesn’t remember a lot of what happened at college. Courting and loving Miyoshi is but a fragment of her life: a ghost. The agent does see the unfinished dress, but it’s hinted part of her had compassion, so she ignores it on her way out. She just did what she considers to be the bare minimum of her job and left.
In the end, once the agent departs, an angry Sol rips the dress apart due to the trauma and grief it embodies. Luna comforts her daughter and lets her know this is what their unflinching Latine people do. They rebuild and overcome adversity in an America that doesn’t often treat marginalized people and people of color with respect. Their names (meaning “sun” and “moon” in Spanish) say that they must never forget hope and the light of resilience and perseverance.
Ultimately, En Memoria doesn’t have full closure due to the mental murder that occurs within Luna’s brain. It leaves fans hopeful that someday Luna will recall Miyoshi’s full existence and the precious, cherished time spent together having a child. This would make a nuanced TV series about sociopolitics in America and how capitalists use their technology, power, money and influence to create and objectify corporate slaves for life.
If En Memoria doesn’t get picked up and turned into a full-length feature, a show would be rife with the potential to explore the agents, the memory bank, and how families cope with these overlords wanting to own their minds in a very rigged game. It acts as a psychological thriller, a queer drama and a horror that deserves an expanded story ,as people in this universe try to survive oppression from the ruling class and stitch their lives together.
En Memoria was screened at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival as part of the Short Film Program.
