How to Cry on Command
2023 · 15m
Directed by Wylie Anderson
Genres: coming-of-age, dark comedy, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, tense
At a dystopian Celebrity Preparatory for Girls, eleven-year-old Mattie is failing her final exams in talk show etiquette and convincing on-command crying — until a private meeting with her teacher tips the film into something much darker. A satirical examination of child stardom as institutional conditioning.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A school where you get graded on fake-crying — and then the teacher's meeting reveals what the real curriculum is. The worldbuilding does the heavy lifting perfectly.
Wylie Anderson's dystopian-grade-school stardom satire — the premise has Lanthimos's institutional menace with a child-actor framing that could either underline or undermine it.
A fully realized dystopian Celebrity Preparatory for Girls where final exams test emotional manipulation — Whiplash-crossed-with-pageant-culture-as-genre-film is exactly the kind of complete world that justifies a 15-minute container.