Anoraks
2020 · 6m · United Kingdom
Directed by Miles Sloman
Genres: comedy, coming-of-age
Tones: darkly comic, whimsical
Arthur & Gwen are siblings, they're also obsessive Cornish re-enacters on a quest. We follow our unlikely pair's pilgrimage to a re-enactment near King Arthur's birthplace, Tintagel. Having recently emerged onto the Cornish medieval re-enactment scene, these misfits must put aside their sibling differences to travel to the heartland of their obsession. A New Creatives commission (Round 2) via Screen Cornwall, supported by Arts Council England and BBC Arts.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise wants you to laugh at these twee Arthurian nerds, but Sloman refuses the easy mockery—instead he lets Arthur and Gwen's genuine devotion breathe, which somehow makes the whole thing weirder and more subversive than a straight parody ever could be.
There's a lineage here of British comedy-of-manners shorts that use landscape and ritual as moral architecture; Sloman inherits that tradition while treating the re-enactment world with the same formal attention other filmmakers reserve for 'serious' subjects.
The film's pivot from sibling antagonism to collaborative pilgrimage hinges entirely on a single moment of non-verbal understanding near Tintagel—a look, a decision to keep walking together—and that economy of gesture is what elevates this from charming to essential.