There is a particular kind of honesty that only appears when people stop performing. No speeches. No heroic framing. Just exhaustion, pain, resentment, love and the fragile vulnerability that emerges when a family finally admits it cannot continue the way it has been living. Joaquim Adrià Pujol’s Màquina steps directly into that space and never looks away.
The premise seems simple. A father battling alcoholism joins his son on a journey to Colorado for psychedelic assisted addiction treatment. They travel across the American West in a worn Winnebago, carrying decades of emotional weight. Yet the film is not interested in becoming a recovery narrative or an inspirational guide to sobriety. Pujol works in murkier emotional territory. The documentary explores inherited pain, the gravity of codependency and the way addiction becomes woven into the structure of a family until nobody can tell where one person’s suffering ends and another’s begins.
What makes Màquina so gripping is its deeply personal perspective. Pujol is not observing from a safe distance. He is inside the wound, trying to understand his family while also trying to survive it. That conflict pulses through every moment. The intimacy can feel uncomfortable, but that discomfort becomes the film’s greatest strength. Pujol strips the filmmaking down to its essentials. There is minimal equipment, no polished talking head interviews and no visible production machinery. Conversations unfold with startling naturalism. Arguments linger. Silences stretch. Faces look tired in ways fiction rarely captures.
The documentary refuses to simplify anyone involved. The father is not reduced to a cautionary stereotype. The son is not framed as a saviour. Love and resentment coexist constantly. Compassion sits beside frustration. Hope flickers briefly before being swallowed again by old habits and emotional scars.
The exploration of psychedelic assisted treatment is handled with maturity. Pujol avoids turning the subject into a trend or a spiritual shortcut. The film approaches the process with scepticism and emotional caution. Psychedelics are not presented as magic solutions. If anything, the film suggests that opening emotional doors forces people to confront truths they have avoided for years. Healing here is messy work.
Visually, Màquina carries a rugged beauty that contrasts the emotional heaviness inside the RV. The landscapes become mirrors for the isolation these men feel. Pujol’s cinematography is restrained and sensitive, knowing when to hold a shot and when to let chaos unfold.
What lingers is the emotional truth beneath everything. Many families carry silence, shame and unresolved trauma across generations. Màquina taps into that reality with precision. It is not an easy watch, but it is a profoundly human one.
Rating 3.5 out of 5.
