Don't Be Shy
2025 · 10m · USA
Directed by Laurence Harlan Jacobs
Genres: dark comedy, drama, romance
Tones: sensual, surreal, tender
On the verge of a long-anticipated threesome, Noah's seductive evening tilts into a surreal, real-life nightmare as a wild surprise upends his fantasy. Based on director Laurence Harlan Jacobs's own true story.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A threesome setup that nosedives into genuine surrealism—most filmmakers would play it safe and cute, but Jacobs commits to the nightmare with the same deadpan sincerity as the seduction, which is exactly why it works and why everyone else will miss it.
Jacobs stakes his work in a lineage of body-horror and romantic comedy that know each other intimately (Kaufman, Švankmajer), and the precision of that tonal handoff—from sensuality to dread—demonstrates a filmmaker aware of what he's inheriting and how to twist it.
The pivot point itself is the film: that moment where the surreal doesn't arrive as a punchline or visual flourish but as genuine emotional rupture, grounded in Jacobs's willingness to keep the performance vulnerable even as the world fractures around it.