Open
2024 · 9m · UK
Directed by Richard Paris Wilson
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, melancholic
A man becomes obsessively fixated on opening one stubborn pistachio nut, ignoring calls from his sister — until a gut-punch ending reveals surprising emotional depth beneath the absurd premise.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Nine minutes of a man losing it on a pistachio with a giant prop pistachio — yes, absolutely, that's a short film. If the gut-punch ending lands it's a 9; if it doesn't it's just a pistachio.
Wilson commits fully to a single-object obsession structure, in the lineage of Don Hertzfeldt's The Black Hole or the early Aardman absurdists. A six-foot pistachio prop suggests the seriousness of the joke.
39K views on SOTW for nine minutes of pistachio obsession is the kind of audience signal that confirms the gut-punch ending actually lands — the 6-foot prop pistachio tells me Wilson committed to the bit at production scale rather than treating it as a metaphor in the script only. Avoidance-as-pistachio is genuinely funny.
Reviews
Wilson crafts a surprisingly potent story from a simple premise, stretching the absurdity of mundane fixation to reveal surprising emotional depth.
It's truly the reveal of the end that packs a punch and makes the film stand out.
Festivals
- New Renaissance Film Festival 2024, Best Dark Comedy
- Edinburgh Short Film Festival 2024, Nominated for Best Scottish Short Film
- Norwich Film Festival 2024
- Sussex International Film Festival 2024