Dragon
1981 · 12m · Australia
Directed by Lucy Maclaren
Genres: adventure, coming-of-age, dark comedy
Tones: darkly comic, surreal, whimsical
Two young sisters sneak into a tram depot at night to retrieve their lost toy dragon.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A 1981 British kids' heist that plays the tram depot like a cathedral—surreal, genuinely unsettling in ways the premise doesn't promise, and completely indifferent to whether you're comfortable. Maclaren trusts the darkness in a way that makes most contemporary indie coming-of-age look neutered.
Maclaren's staging within the depot locales demonstrates a rigorous understanding of negative space and scale; the film situates itself in a lineage of British children's cinema that prizes atmosphere over narrative comfort, with the formal discipline of a director already assured in her grammar.
The decision to keep the dragon itself mostly unseen—letting the girls' desperation carry the emotional weight—transforms what could have been sentimental into something genuinely eerie; on what must have been a minimal budget, that single restraint makes the whole thing work.
Reviews
Lucy Maclaren and Paul Goldman's 1981 student short film Dragon portrays Melbourne's trams as an otherworldly obstacle course. Dodging mechanics, night-shift workers, and certain death from decapitation, the sisters are ultimately successful, locating their toy under a seat, but at what cost?