AUTOGNOMO
2025 · 3m · España
Directed by IVO ERASMO
Genres: dark comedy, drama, satire
Tones: absurdist, contemplative, darkly comic
In a Kafkaesque tale, a self-employed man has his business shut down the very day he opens it, purely for bureaucratic reasons.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A three-minute gut-punch that weaponizes Kafka against the machinery of modern bureaucracy—the real obscenity is that this premise doesn't even need exaggeration to feel grotesque. Erasmo understands that the funniest horror is when the system wins without breaking a sweat.
The film's restraint echoes a lineage of Eastern European absurdist cinema, grounding its Kafkaesque premise in formally rigorous pacing that refuses melodrama; the architecture of its humor comes from tonal discipline rather than easy satire.
The crucial move here is the sound design during the shutdown sequence—that shift from entrepreneurial ambient optimism to administrative silence does the work three minutes could never complete with dialogue alone, and it's why this scales beyond its budget.