Not Us
2023 · 11m · USA
Directed by James Kautz
Genres: drama, experimental, thriller
Tones: dark, provocative, tense
Inside a mysterious group audition presided over by a god-like director, mounting pressure causes one performer to break, forcing another to choose between conformity and a single act of compassion that could disrupt the entire toxic system. The film uses the audition space as a pressure-cooker allegory for complicity in abusive institutions.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
An allegory that refuses to name itself — the audition room as a totalitarian system with no exit signs — exactly the kind of controlled discomfort that short film is built for.
James Kautz keeps the institution permanently abstract so the audition allegory can't be exculpated as 'about acting' — the ambiguity is the rigor, and the Dogtooth-adjacent compression earns it.
A group-audition pressure cooker that keeps the industry permanently abstract so the abuse allegory can't be exculpated — that's a smart structural choice for 11 minutes. The ambiguity is the whole engine.