Offline
2025 · 16m · Norway
Directed by Mauritz Brekke Solberg, Daniel Fure Schwarz
Genres: dark comedy, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic
Representatives from a major security brand, an advertising agency and a production company meet at a so-called offline meeting to agree on the final cut of a commercial — a story based on true events, though why it is called “offline” when the meeting is clearly online remains a small mystery.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A film about a film about a commercial, where the real subject is corporate dysfunction masquerading as process—it's the kind of nested, self-aware absurdism that makes you question what you're actually watching, and most scouts would call it too clever by half, which is exactly why it works.
The layering of mediation (commercial within meeting within film) positions itself shrewdly against a lineage of institutional satire and Brechtian distance, though the execution's commitment to formal rigor will determine whether this lands as critique or mere clever observation.
The choice to play the entire thing straight—letting the dialogue and the mounting cognitive dissonance of an 'offline' online meeting do the heavy lifting rather than winking at the camera—is what transforms a simple premise into something with actual teeth.
Reviews
Unter anderem aufgeblähte Kundenmeetings, bei denen so eine ganz fiese Stimmung in der Luft liegt. Da geht es leider nicht immer um eine objektive Beurteilung und partnerschaftliche Absprache von Inhalten, sondern darum, dem Kunden nachzuplappern und dessen Wünsche einzubinden, so bescheuert diese auch sein mögen.