Next Floor
2008 · 12m · Canada
Directed by Denis Villeneuve
Genres: dark comedy, experimental, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, mythic, tense
Eleven pampered guests at an opulent banquet engage in ritualistic gastronomic carnage, consuming raw meats with frenzied abandon as the floor beneath them repeatedly collapses under the weight of their excess.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Pre-Dune Villeneuve making a wordless, floorboard-collapsing allegory about bourgeois gluttony — this is the film he apparently needed to make before he could make everything else.
Villeneuve's wordless allegory of consumerist obliviousness — eleven banqueters refusing to acknowledge the floors collapsing beneath them — is one of the great modern short-film visual essays. Exterminating Angel lineage fully earned. 200+ festivals, ~60 prizes for a reason.
Villeneuve before he was Villeneuve, with eleven banqueters eating themselves through collapsing floors as pure wordless allegory — Cannes Critics' Week prize, 60+ international awards. This is the canonical version of "single visual idea, executed."
Reviews
A metaphorical comment on the voracious and destructive nature of human consumerism.
Festivals
- Cannes Film Festival — Semaine de la Critique 2008, Canal+ Award for Best Short Film
- Toronto International Film Festival 2008, Special Jury Citation for Best Canadian Short Film
- Genie Awards 2009, Genie Award
- Jutra Awards 2009, Prix Jutra