Momentum
2013 · 7m · Germany
Directed by Boris Seewald
Genres: comedy, experimental, musical
Tones: humorous, surreal, whimsical
Sparked by a chance encounter with a tortilla chip, an exuberant dancer (Patrick Hanna) tumbles into a moment of self-discovery and spreads his contagious joy through movement, drawing everyone — even his mother — into his surreal, dance-filled world.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A tortilla chip as narrative catalyst is delightfully absurd, but the film spends most of its runtime executing a fairly straightforward dance-eruption fantasy—fun, sure, but it never pushes the weirdness far enough to genuinely unsettle or surprise.
Seewald demonstrates confident command of kinetic editing and a clear debt to the musical's choreographic tradition, though the film's whimsy resists the formal rigor and thematic depth that would elevate it beyond a well-crafted novelty.
The genius move here is using repetition and escalation in the editing—each cut tighter, each dancer added in tighter rhythm—to make the mundane spark feel genuinely contagious; it's a film that understands how to build momentum through pure visual pacing rather than plot.
Reviews
Taking a simple story with a universal message and injecting it with energy and warmth, Seewald has created a short film bound to inspire and entertain its audience.