Bram
2025 · 21m · USA
Directed by Bradley Hildebrandt, Cullen Arbaugh
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic
Fiona visits her son Dalton in Minneapolis, where he has recently separated from his wife and taken up with a new live-in boyfriend named Bram, who is unwelcoming to her presence. As Fiona uncovers troubling details about Dalton's new relationship and Bram's shady past, complications and comedic moments ensue.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Takes the moldy "meet the boyfriend" setup and dunks it headfirst into genuine depravity—no soft landing, no audience comfort, just two filmmakers willing to play their own worst selves for the bit, and it *works* because they're not winking at you about it.
A sharp inversion of domestic comedy tradition that earns its formal control through restraint; the escalation lands precisely because the filmmakers understand the genre they're corrupting, even as they dismantle it.
The willingness to let the couple stay *consistently terrible* rather than redeem them in act three—that refusal to flinch away from their own characters' ugliness is what transforms a premise into something you can't quite shake.
Reviews
I love Bram. It only gets better on rewatch — Lucinda Holshue and Bradley Hildebrandt are killer.
A masterpiece.
Festivals
- Omaha Film Festival 2025
- Flip the Script Fest 2025