Jimmy Arcurio Presents: Rebel Without A Beer
2022 · 17m · United States
Directed by Mattias Marasigan
Genres: comedy, satire, sports
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, humorous
An unsponsored Chicago shopping-cart racer with an underground style challenges the sport's veteran champion in a deadpan mockumentary.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A deadpan mockumentary about underground shopping-cart racing in Chicago is exactly the kind of premise that makes you go 'wait, WHAT?' — and Marasigan actually commits to the bit hard enough that it stops being a joke and becomes something genuinely strange and subversive.
The film's formal restraint—its refusal to wink at the absurdity—situates it in a lineage of deadpan sports satire that traces back through mockumentary tradition, though the execution occasionally sacrifices the precision that would elevate this to something truly considered.
The decision to play every moment of shopping-cart racing with complete tonal seriousness, treating it as legitimate sport, is the single choice that transforms what could've been a sketch into something that actually works—and that commitment to tone is what carries a micro-budget concept this far.
Festivals
- Hobnobben Film Festival 2022