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2025 · 10m · USA
Directed by Sarah Maerten, Lincoln Robisch
Genres: comedy, experimental
Tones: darkly comic, provocative, surreal
A man chokes to death on an egg during a livestream while viewers, too busy performing their emotions for a distant audience, fail to help — a savage satire of online performativity and the surrealism of watching tragedy unfold from behind a screen.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A oner where everyone watches a man choke to death on an egg and tries to go viral instead of helping — this is the internet distilled into nine minutes of screaming.
Robisch and Maerten have fashioned an object of genuine formal daring: a snuff film about engagement culture that is, improbably, also the funniest short I have encountered this season.
Single continuous take with hidden VFX and rotoscoping on a $5K budget, telling a livestream choking death where viewers perform grief for an audience — Maerten and Robisch nailing both the technical conceit and the screen-life satire to win SXSW's Vimeo Staff Pick Award is no small feat. The form is the indictment.
Reviews
A disturbing downward spiral into the underworld of the internet, this film is a heart attack, a kink-fest, and a funeral for our attention span all in one. It holds up a mirror to the human choreography of shame online that is the insufferable, relentless pursuit of recognition and fame while never losing its savage comic nerve.
An insane and sneaky-VFX-heavy SXSW short film that explores what it feels like to be online right now, and how terrifying it can be to live in a world where people are too busy performing their emotions for a distant audience to exist in a genuine reality.
Festivals
- SXSW 2026, Vimeo Staff Pick Award
- NEW/NEXT Film Festival 2025