Hollywood Pandemonium
2025 · 1h 17m · France
Directed by Cosmotropia de Xam
Genres: experimental, horror
Tones: dark, provocative, surreal
A fever-drenched descent into the occult underbelly of Tinseltown where starlets and demonic muses wage war.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
77 minutes of Cosmotropia de Xam doing his neon-occult-Tinseltown-possession routine — the man has a brand and he commits, which I'll always take over polite indie sincerity. Jodorowsky comparisons are aspirational at best, but the swagger earns a look.
Cosmotropia de Xam operates squarely in the Jean Rollin tradition of esoteric European underground, and the seventy-seven-minute occult-Hollywood premise is honest about what it is. The duration disqualifies it from the short-film conversation regardless of merit.
Vimeo VOD lists it as 1 hour 17 minutes in French with English subtitles — that's a feature, not a short, which means the 'fever-drenched occult Tinseltown' pitch has to sustain 77 minutes of underground cult cinema. Cosmotropia de Xam has the track record to attempt it, but rentable festival cut at $6.99 sits outside the short-form lane.