Matta and Matto
2025 · 10m · Switzerland
Directed by Bianca Caderas, Kerstin Zemp
Tones: absurdist, dark, melancholic
In a dystopian world where touch is forbidden, two hoteliers offer lonely inhabitants access to forbidden sensory pleasures — for the price of a finger.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Caderas and Zemp have constructed a fable of bodily estrangement that speaks with the quiet dread of Kafka while remaining formally inventive in every frame — exactly the kind of continental animation that deserves wider institutional attention.
A dystopian hotel where you pay for touch with a finger — visceral metaphor, brutally literal. Swiss 3D animation rarely takes swings this large; this one connects.
The pay-with-a-finger transaction is a hell of an image — turning the cost of touch into a literal severance, rendered in detailed 3D animation. Dystopia-where-touch-is-forbidden is a setup that could feel familiar, but the body-as-currency conceit suggests Caderas and Zemp went for the throat.
Reviews
Bianca Caderas and Kerstin Zemp's vision of a place where touch is forbidden might be one of the most haunting I've ever seen.
Festivals
- Sundance Film Festival 2025
- SXSW 2025