Since the pandemic made face masks compulsory, smiles have been transformed. Lips have taken a much-deserved holiday, hidden under colourful, innovative covers. The landscape is as hopeless as it comes: a sterile field devoid of smiles. In all of this, eyes have become the main characters. No matter the colour, shape or size. At last, eyes have earned the role they deserve.

María Elena Lorenzin (Jáchal, San Juan, Argentina) holds a Bachelor Degree in Literature from the Cuyo National University (Mendoza) and a PhD from Flinders University. She is the author of two books of microfiction, Microsueños (2008) y Parricidio (2018), both published by Editorial Asterión in Santiago, Chile. Her work has been featured in multiple anthologies, most recently in Microfantafabulosas. Relatos fantásticos de mujeres fabulosas(Tenerife, 2021); No somos invisibles. Antología de Microficcionistas de Latinoamérica (Buenos Aires, 2021) and Mínimas Máximas (Santiago, 2021). She is a founding member of REM, Red de Escritoras Microficcionistas.

César Albarrán-Torres is a Mexican-Australian scholar and film critic. He is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at Swinburne University of Technology. He has been widely published in academic and non-academic titles as a film and literary critic, author and translator. His current research focuses on film and television, as well as the negotiations between social media and politics in Mexico, particularly concerning the drug cartels. He is the author of Digital Gambling: Theorizing Gamble-Play Media (2018) and Global Trafficking Networks on Film and Television: Hollywood’s Cartel Wars (2021). He is an editor at the online journal Senses of Cinema.