Amp
2023 · 7m
Directed by Adam Marisett
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
Ten years after leaving a war his father started, a young man selling illegal custom-tech in the slums must decide whether to finish the war he never wanted.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The setup screams inherited-conflict revenge tale, but Marisett seems to actually be interrogating whether this kid wants any of it—which is almost boring until you realize the real subversion is restraint, not spectacle.
A cleanly composed sci-fi morality play that knows its debt to war cinema and philosophical SF; the contemplative pacing suggests a filmmaker thinking formally about how to make inaction feel as consequential as a firefight.
That seven minutes hinges on a single choice: keeping the camera on the protagonist's face during the moment of refusal, letting the ambient tech hum do the argument instead of dialogue—it's the kind of sound design decision that makes a micro-budget frame feel like it costs everything.