Blue Skies
2026 · 10m · USA
Directed by Jack Krupp
Genres: comedy
Tones: humorous, melancholic, whimsical
A young Angeleno tries to have a productive day and instead gets sewage problems, a French tutor, and lukewarm screenwriting notes. The improvised rhythm finds comedy in the tiny defeats of trying to make something.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Mumblecore is supposed to be dead, which makes this exactly the kind of corpse I want to dig up. Sewage problems and bad screenwriting notes beat another tasteful trauma short any day of the week.
LA-set mumblecore in the Bujalski lineage, and the screenwriter-receiving-notes-on-his-own-film loop is a sturdy joke, but mumblecore-as-genre needs an unusually sharp ear to feel necessary in 2026. The premise as described stays in the safe lane.
Mumblecore where the screenwriting mentor tells our hero to throw out the script — meta enough to either land or eat itself. The sewage-backup-into-French-tutor-into-bad-notes daisy chain sounds like real LA, not workshopped LA.