Jagon
2016 · 21m · Alemania
Directed by Murat Eyüp Gönültas
Genres: action, adventure, fantasy
An old hunter discovers the lost rosary of a mysterious Saracen princess. The rosary holds an ancient secret power that sets his adventure in motion.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The premise wants to be mythic-adventure boilerplate—lost relic, mysterious princess, chosen-one energy—but Gönültas seems oddly earnest about it, which is either a misfire or a genuine faith in genre that's almost punk. Either way, it's not trying to subvert anything, so it's not for me.
A 21-minute fantasy that treats its source material—Islamic mysticism, the Crusades, the logic of relics—with formal seriousness and visual discipline; this is exactly the kind of short that respects both its genre lineage and its audience's intelligence, sitting comfortably in a tradition of literary adventure cinema.
The real choice here is committing to practical action and tangible production design on what must be a modest budget; Gönültas doesn't hide behind CGI or shortcuts, and that material integrity—real locations, real movement—is what sells the mythic tone instead of undermining it.