Offline Dating
2015 · 6m · UK
Directed by Samuel Abrahams
Genres: documentary, romance
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, tender
A filmmaker challenges his newly single friend Tom to spend a weekend finding a date without using the internet, turning Hackney into a laboratory for analog human connection.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The whole premise is a rejection of the digital infrastructure we use to avoid actual human awkwardness — watching someone try to talk to strangers in person is now genuinely experimental cinema.
A six-minute social experiment that slides into something tenderer and more philosophical than the doc-conceit suggests — the Hackney-as-laboratory framing and the My Dinner with Andre reference both punch above the apparent slightness. A small, properly observed thing.
Single friend tries to find a date in Hackney without his phone — six minutes that swerve from social experiment to genuine anthropology of flirtation. Webby-nominated, and the conceit is more durable than the stunt it sounds like.
Reviews
This meditative quality truly makes Abrahams' film such a special watch.