DUMP YARD
2024 · 16m · India
Directed by Nikhil Rajendra Shinde
An IT professional's frantic morning spirals into a cross-city chase after his phone ends up in the garbage truck on his son's birthday.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a premise that could've been a forgettable phone-retrieval gag, but Shinde somehow makes the garbage truck chase feel genuinely consequential — the film refuses to let the absurdity win, and that refusal is what makes it work.
A formally disciplined escalation: each beat of the chase is calibrated with the precision of classic silent comedy, yet the emotional substrate (a father's panic on his son's birthday) gives it weight that most modern comedies completely abandon.
The film pivots on a single sound design choice — the truck's hydraulic compression becomes the heartbeat of the whole thing — and that one decision transforms what could've been a slapstick detour into something genuinely unsettling and urgent.
Festivals
- North American Marathi Film Festival 2025, Best Short Film
- Alpavirama International Youth Film Festival, NID Ahmedabad 2024, Silver Comma Award
- Paridrishya International Festival 2025, Best Film - Student Category
- Paridrishya International Festival 2025, Best Screenplay - Student Category
- Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) - Official Selection 2024
- IFFSA Toronto - Official Selection 2024
- SiGNS - Indian Festival of Documentaries & Short Fiction - Official Selection 2024