FENCED
2025 · 10m · UK
Directed by Richey Beckett
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, provocative
An eccentric married couple hunts for mushrooms in the Welsh hills while renegotiating their open relationship in unnervingly explicit terms. He'd rather film the mycelium; she'd rather close the deal.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Foraging-as-marriage-counseling is the kind of high-concept I usually heckle, but Beckett refuses to flinch in either direction. The landscape never wins the fight with the dialogue.
Beckett stages frank open-relationship negotiation as a foraging walk through lush Welsh landscape — Andrew Haigh's Weekend honesty with Hogg's restraint. Johanna Warren's script doing real work; the location-as-pressure-valve is exactly right.
Frank open-relationship negotiation staged as a Welsh-hillside foraging walk while he films mycelium on his Super 8mm — the location choice doing the conversational work, with Johanna Warren writing and starring, is exactly the right calibration. Andrew Haigh's Weekend lineage is a substantial reach.
Reviews
a provocative comedy featuring radically honest conversation through lush open fields.