Living Like Kings
2014 · 3m · New Zealand
Directed by Zoe McIntosh
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, provocative
In the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake, a small group of homeless people — including a man who calls himself Cowboy — squat in abandoned mansions, briefly tasting what it's like to live like a king amid the disaster.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Most disaster docs genuflect at tragedy; McIntosh finds the anarchic dark comedy in it, letting homeless people become accidental philosophers of abundance instead of victims of pity. It's subversive without preaching, which is the only way to do politics right.
The film sits in productive tension with the social-realist documentary tradition—it refuses the expected somber register and instead deploys dark comedy as formal strategy, placing it closer to essayistic provocation than straightforward advocacy.
The genius move is the tone: by letting Cowboy and crew speak with wry humor rather than extracting trauma from them, McIntosh creates a three-minute shift in how we see displacement, and that tonal choice does all the heavy lifting.
Reviews
This is the rare short film that deserves to be longer!