Holding Out
2026 · 15m · Australia
Directed by James Adams
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
A 125-year-old retired superhero, long past his glory days, is forced to reckon with his legacy when the past comes calling. A small-scale, character-driven take on the aging-hero archetype.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone's tired of the 'broken hero' beat, but Adams actually flips it—125 years old isn't a twist, it's the whole point, and that refusal to make decay spectacle is quietly radical in a genre drowning in fan service.
A formally disciplined meditation on the superhero film's unspoken endgame, trading the genre's visual grammar for intimate portraiture; the restraint here—what Adams doesn't show—sits in direct conversation with decades of cape mythology.
That 125-year-old body moving through mundane space, the smallness of the performance against the weight of legend—that's the entire film, and Adams trusts it completely, letting quietness do what spectacle never could.