It's Just A Whole
2023 · 11m · Germany
Directed by Bianca Scali
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: absurdist, contemplative
A woman wrestles with an unexpectedly agonizing decision over having a tiny mole removed.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A short that treats a mole like a moral crisis and gets away with it—the kind of premise that sounds ridiculous until you realize it's not actually about the mole at all. Scali leans hard into the absurdist paralysis and somehow makes you feel the full weight of her protagonist's existential vertigo over something medically trivial.
The film's restraint and tonal control reveal a deliberate hand: dark comedy that doesn't wink, contemplation that resists sentimentality, and a formal structure that lets silence and small gestures carry the philosophical weight. It sits comfortably in the lineage of character-driven microdramas that find the cosmic in the mundane.
The entire film hinges on Scali's decision to keep the camera mostly static and close on the protagonist's face—that refusal to cut away or rescue the moment with music lets the absurdity and genuine anguish occupy the same space, which is where the film actually lives.