A Hole
2020 · 12m · New Zealand
Directed by James Solomon
Genres: dark comedy, experimental, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
A skilled workman digs a perfect hole on a cracked earthen plain inside an endless warehouse while well-dressed onlookers on couches offer contradictory opinions — and the job gradually unravels.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A Hole is exactly the kind of premise that makes you go 'wait, WHAT?'—a man digs a perfect hole while suited randoms on couches actively sabotage his work with contradictory noise, and somehow it's both a scathing take on consensus culture and completely unwatchable in the best way. Everyone else would've walked; I'm making room for it.
Solomon situates this squarely in the lineage of Brechtian absurdism and institutional critique, with each cut between the workman and the couch gallery functioning as formal argument—the editing rhythm itself becomes the satire, measured and merciless in its construction.
The decision to keep the camera static on the hole itself while the audience noise rises is the lift here—by refusing to show the well-dressed commentators' faces until the very end, Solomon makes the abstraction of authority visceral in a way that no budget gimmick could touch.