Floodgates
2025 · 14m · USA
Directed by Alana Rosenbloom
Tones: contemplative, humorous, tender
When Elise suddenly can't pee, she embarks on a quietly determined quest through doctors, partners, and her own body to figure out what's wrong — a comedy about pelvic floor dysfunction and the resilience it takes to become your own advocate.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Most festivals would bury a short about pelvic floor dysfunction in the late-night section and call it brave; Rosenbloom just makes it *funny* without winking, which is somehow more subversive than the premise deserves credit for.
There's a deliberate restraint here—the editing favors accumulation over punchlines, and the film sits comfortably in a lineage of intimate body-comedy that traces back through feminist documentary practice, even as it refuses solemnity.
The genius move is outsourcing Elise's internal experience to the people around her—doctors, partners, the medical apparatus itself—so we experience pelvic floor dysfunction as a relational problem, not just a bodily one, and that structural choice does the emotional work.