Benefits
2017 · 4m · UK
Directed by Edward Lomas
Genres: dark comedy, sci-fi
Tones: absurdist, dark, darkly comic
In an isolated, totalitarian England in 2028, a man named Adeel must argue his case before a malfunctioning machine and a panel of awkward citizens just to receive his benefits check.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A bureaucratic nightmare turned absurdist theater—welfare as performance art, the state as broken oracle, random citizens as unwilling judges of your right to eat. This is the kind of premise that makes you uncomfortable precisely because it's already halfway true.
Lomas situates this squarely in the lineage of Kafkaesque institutional satire and British dystopian comedy, executing the formal conceit with precision: the machine's malfunction mirrors the system's cruelty through pure mechanical failure. It's a carefully constructed argument about dignity wrapped in genre discipline.
The decision to make those citizens genuinely awkward—not gleeful executioners, just ordinary people trapped in an absurd ritual—transforms what could be a sermon into something human and unsettling; that discomfort in their faces does the work that exposition couldn't touch.
Reviews
The story and its unexpected twists had me laughing more than once, as nothing goes by the book and Adeel's future is absurd in the best way. Despite being only three minutes long, the film manages to deliver a clever plot twist at the end, neatly closing the loop.
Funded as part of Channel 4's Random Acts, Benefits imagines a near-future Britain run by a powerful few — a sharp short showcasing how dystopian films can act as a warning about robots and automation.
Festivals
- Curzon Cinema's Explore The World 2018