Automania
1994 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Robert Awad
Genres: animation, comedy, satire
A commuter's morning unravels when his car remote refuses to unlock the door, and he stubbornly rejects every alternative offered by passersby.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A guy refuses to walk, call a cab, or accept help because his remote won't work—it's aggressively stupid in the best way, a five-minute fuck-you to rational problem-solving that most shorts would resolve in ten seconds but this one commits to the bit like a religion.
Awad's restraint in animation timing recalls the deadpan economy of classic NFB comedies, where each held frame and delayed reaction reads as deliberate formal choice rather than budget limitation; the escalating absurdity is built on architectural precision.
The film lives or dies on a single decision: refusing to cut away from the protagonist's face during each rejection, letting us watch the exact moment his stubbornness calcifies into something pathological—that commitment to holding on the performance transforms what could be a gag into something genuinely strange.