Game
2017 · 15m
Directed by Jeannie Donohoe
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, sports
Tones: contemplative, tense
A talented new player shows up at a high-school boys' basketball tryout determined to earn a place, while hiding that she is a girl.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise wants to be a gender-politics parable, but Donohoe refuses the sermon—she lets the tension live in bodies and breath instead of arguments, which is smarter and riskier than the obvious read.
A cleanly constructed coming-of-age that understands the formal language of sports cinema (the tryout as crucible, the locker room as social text) and executes it with deliberate restraint.
The film pivots entirely on the decision to keep the camera close during the physical moments—how Donohoe frames the body as both weapon and secret—and that single formal choice transforms what could've been an after-school-special into something genuinely unsettling.