100 Ghosts
2022 · 1m · Canada
Directed by Noncedo Khumalo
Genres: experimental, fantasy, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
A woman jolts awake to strange noises and steps into a surreal landscape shaped by private fears. The dream world grows stranger with each encounter.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A woman wakes into surrealism—fine, we've seen that—but Khumalo doesn't wink at the audience or deconstruct the genre; she just *lives* in the strangeness without apology, which is either bold restraint or a misfire depending on your tolerance for ambiguity.
The film operates within a lineage of feminist surrealism and dream-logic cinema (Švankmajer, perhaps; certainly the experimental avant-garde), and its formal commitment to the uncanny—each encounter darkening rather than clarifying—demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of how repetition becomes dread.
One minute and a woman stepping into her own fear-landscape could flatten easily, but Khumalo anchors it all in that initial jolt—the specific texture of waking disorientation—which makes the subsequent strangeness feel earned rather than imposed.