Hand in Hand
2019 · 4m · Switzerland
Directed by Ennio Ruschetti
Genres: dark comedy, horror, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
Two politicians from opposing parties go in for a yawn-worthy handshake signifying peace, but the gesture mutates into a grotesque Cronenberg-esque tangle of multiplying hands.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Finally—a film that understands satire isn't a scolding, it's a *mutation*. Taking the dead ceremonial handshake and letting it metastasize into Cronenbergian flesh-horror is exactly the kind of "wait, WHAT?" premise that makes me want to champion a short nobody else saw coming.
Ruschetti's formal control here is surgical: the composition holds steady through escalating grotesquerie, anchoring the surrealism in a language of political documentary before the body horror erupts—a deliberate dialogue with Buñuel's absurdism and contemporary genre pastiche.
The edit from the first handshake clasp to the multiplying fingers is *the* moment—a single cut that shifts the entire grammar from satire to nightmare, and somehow that one decision transforms what could've been a one-joke premise into something that actually sticks.
Reviews
'Hand in Hand' is a smart commentary on governments around the world that will make you laugh at its absurdity and cringe at the fact that this grotesque body horror comedy isn't too far off from reality.