Kindred
2018 · 8m · United Kingdom
Directed by Samona Olanipekun
Genres: essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, surreal
London-based, Coventry-born filmmaker Samona Olanipekun explores the concepts of home, identity and belonging, taking his starting point from the theme of globalisation.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Essay film about globalisation and belonging sounds like the kind of thing that puts people to sleep, but Olanipekun's actually doing something weirder—the surrealism isn't decoration, it's the argument itself, which is the only way this premise doesn't feel like a TED talk.
Olanipekun positions himself in a clear lineage of experimental essay cinema—the formal restraint and conceptual rigor place this firmly in conversation with artists thinking through identity and place as form, not just theme; the 8 minutes feel like they've been spent on deliberation, not compromise.
The choice to let surrealism carry the emotional weight rather than narration or conventional montage is the hinge—it's a small budget decision with outsized impact, letting abstraction do what literal documentation couldn't.