Diagnosis
2018 · 18m
Directed by Eva Riley
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, tender
How long do you have to tell a lie before it becomes the truth? A drama where black-and-white morals bleed into shades of gray.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Riley sets up what looks like a moral fable and then refuses to resolve it—the lie just metastasizes into something neither protagonist nor audience can untangle, which is bracing, but the dark comedy never quite commits hard enough to justify its own uncertainty.
A formally precise interrogation of narrative unreliability that recalls the rigorous tradition of unreliable-narrator cinema; Riley's control over tone and the editing between versions of truth suggests a filmmaker working confidently within a lineage she understands.
The masterstroke here is how Riley uses **repetition**—telling the same scene three ways, each detail shift reframing everything—so that what could've been a gimmick becomes a weapon against comfortable viewing, and the audience's complicity in choosing which version to believe does the moral work.
Reviews
The 17min short is funny, heartbreaking and breathtakingly gripping, and promises to stay with you long after the credits roll. Charlotte Spencer's performance, however, is what welds the film together.