#Losing
2017 · 3m · New Zealand
Directed by Damian Golfinopoulos
Genres: biography, documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Poet and former rapper Dominic Hoey prepares a live performance while battling a degenerative bone disease that curtails his physical expression.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a doc about a poet with a disease preparing to perform—sounds like grief-porn comfort food, except Golfinopoulos refuses to let the narrative breathe easy, letting the contradiction between linguistic precision and bodily limitation do the real work instead of sentiment.
A formally restrained portrait that understands its debt to the artist-in-crisis lineage while resisting melodrama through measured pacing and the quiet formal sovereignty of Hoey's own voice as both subject and poet.
The film's entire architecture hinges on that single decision to let Hoey's performance—his voice, his presence at the mic—remain the center while the camera pulls back to witness rather than illustrate his constraint; it's the kind of formal restraint that transforms a three-minute piece into something that lingers.