Dirt Daughter
2021 · 10m · USA
Directed by Marnie Ellen Hertzler
Genres: comedy, drama, experimental
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, tender
A lonely security guard wanders an empty building at night, scrolling farmersonly.com for a companion. Loneliness, fluorescent lighting, and a very specific dating site.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Hertzler's already proven she can mine the deeply specific until it bleeds metaphor. A night guard on farmersonly.com is exactly the kind of detail that ruins lesser filmmakers — she'll wear it like a coat.
Hertzler treats farmersonly.com as an unironic spiritual destination — and the joke and the loneliness occupy the same fluorescent frame. From the Crestone universe, recognizably.
A lonely security guard scrolling farmersonly.com in an empty fluorescent building — the niche dating site as unironic spiritual destination is exactly the kind of specific detail that makes a tone piece work. Page summary's thin but Hertzler's specificity is the signature.