Flyby
2019 · 13m
Directed by Jesse Mittelstadt
Genres: experimental, horror, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
As an asteroid passes Earth, one man's perception of time begins to slip, and moments of his life start going missing.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Time-slippage sci-fi is a tired premise, but Mittelstadt doesn't psychologize it into some vapid metaphor—he lets the missing moments *stay* missing, which is genuinely unsettling in a way most experimental shorts chicken out on.
A formally precise descent into fragmentation that recalls Brakhage's temporal play and the structural rigor of '70s avant-garde, though it risks collapsing its own logic by the final act.
The masterstroke is the sound design cutting before the image does—those micro-silences where dialogue should resolve create the vertigo the premise promises, and it's done on what looks like no budget at all.