Burrow
2023 · 14m · USA
Directed by Leaf Lieber
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Believing himself to be one of the last survivors in the wake of human extinction, an isolated ex-war soldier finds unexpected comfort with the arrival of a weary traveler, forcing him to confront his long-suppressed sexuality.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Most post-apocalypse shorts use extinction as window dressing; Lieber uses it as a pressure valve, and watching a hardened soldier's carefully built solitude crack open the moment another body enters the frame is genuinely subversive—queer desire emerging not despite the end of the world, but *because* of it.
The two-hander tradition demands restraint, and Burrow understands this; its formal economy—sparse setting, minimal dialogue, the architectural precision of staging two men across empty space—allows tenderness to accumulate like sediment, positioning intimate vulnerability as its own kind of post-human survival.
That single decision to hold the camera on the soldier's face during the traveler's arrival, letting recognition bloom across his features before he speaks, does the entire emotional work of the film—Lieber trusts performance over exposition, and that one unflinching moment justifies the whole premise.
Reviews
Beautiful and guttural, could've watched two hours more.
Somehow hopeful apocalyptic picture, but gut-wrenching real life metaphor.
Festivals
- Tribeca Film Festival 2023
- Boston Film Festival 2023
- NYU Tisch First Run Film Festival 2023
- Frameline Film Festival 2024