Gather In The Corner
2020 · 10m · USA
Directed by Joanny Causse
Tones: dark, provocative, tense
An instructor named Bill walks a reluctant 7th grade class through a firearm safety drill. The film stages, with chilling matter-of-factness, what an American classroom run by armed teachers might actually look like.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Most political shorts hector. This one just stages the armed-teacher proposal as a calm classroom drill and lets the room go cold. Provocation by procedure — the best kind.
Causse stages an armed-teacher drill at near-documentary remove and trusts the matter-of-factness to indict itself — classroom-sized Lanthimos in the best sense. The withheld editorializing is the discipline.
A near-documentary armed-teachers safety drill performed with real 7th graders is the kind of premise that doesn't need to argue — the matter-of-factness IS the argument. Affable instructor Bill is a chilling delivery system.