Angry Signal
2018 · 3m · Francia
Directed by Benjamin Leron, Emmanuelle Gaufillier, Helia Delcroix, Jefferson Cortes, Lucile Julies-Gaston, Marion Jabinet, Maxime Peyrondet, Sébastien Ploidori
Genres: comedy, fantasy, surrealism
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, whimsical
At the wheel of his Mustang GT500 Shelby, Manolo tries to seduce the woman driver beside him and commits a traffic offence; the traffic light comes to life and tries to make him stop, so Manolo decides to escape.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A traffic light as antagonist, a Shelby Mustang as the stage for masculine ego, and a three-minute chase that treats the absurd with zero winking—this is exactly the kind of premise that makes most programmers nervous and that's precisely why it works.
The surrealist conceit sits comfortably within a lineage of mid-century absurdist cinema, though the execution relies more on whimsy than the formal rigor that would elevate it beyond a clever premise.
The decision to make the traffic light a physical, antagonistic presence rather than mere magical realism sells the whole thing—it's a single formal choice that transforms a gag into something genuinely strange and urgent.