Kinderfilm
2023 · 11m · Austria
Directed by Adrian Jonas Haim, Michael Stumpf, Robin Klengel
Genres: animation, essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic, provocative
Inside GTA V, NPC Edgar Thompson drifts through silent streets confronting a missing future — a machinima essay film weaponizing the game's mundanity.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Using Grand Theft Auto V to make a slow Akerman-style film about a missing future is either the most audacious bait-and-switch in gaming cinema or pure genius — I'm going with genius.
Using GTA V — a game defined by spectacular violence — to make a slow wordless essay about existential emptiness is a properly contemporary formal redirection. Akerman/Marker/Farocki is the right lineage and machinima is, finally, growing up.
GTA V as the medium for a slow wordless essay film about existential emptiness — using a violence-engine to make Akerman-coded NPC drift is exactly the right kind of critical inversion. Eleven minutes that should be impossible.
Festivals
- Locarno Film Festival 2023