Bendito Machine V – Pull the Trigger
2014 · 12m · España
Directed by Jossie Malis
Genres: animation, satire, sci-fi
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
An unlikely hero embarks on a crude journey by land, sea and air among all the attractions of a planet turned into a gigantic petrochemical park… and beyond.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Malis turns the entire planet into a petrochemical fever dream and then sends a hapless character stumbling through it like some deranged theme park—it's the kind of premise that makes you immediately ask 'wait, is this actually brilliant satire or just controlled chaos?' and then realize it's both, which is exactly why everyone else walked past it.
The film's lineage traces clearly to political animation and surrealist worldbuilding, yet Malis resists the earnestness those traditions often demand, instead achieving formal satire through accumulation and grotesque visual grammar—a calculated tonal choice that earns its dark comedy through compositional restraint.
The masterstroke is the decision to keep the protagonist's expressions and movements deliberately simple and wooden against the baroque industrial landscape surrounding them—that tonal contrast between character and world does more narrative work than any dialogue could, and on what must be a modest animation budget, that restraint is everything.