Pakan
2016 · 8m · Austria
Directed by Andreas Weiss, Christoph Lendenfeld, Christoph Würzlhuber, Doris Rastinger, Elmar Glaubauf, Imanuel Thallinger, Markus Hadinger, Matthias Patscheider
Genres: adventure, drama, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, dark, mythic
In a world turned into a deadly desert by an endless drought, a young man undertakes a treacherous journey, his hope pinned on a mysterious little box, to save his tribe from extinction.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Eight directors piloting a post-apocalyptic desert odyssey sounds like consensus-building purgatory, yet somehow the mythic restraint and refusal to sensationalize the premise—just a kid, a box, a dying world—feels quietly radical in its anti-spectacle.
The formal discipline here is striking: a collaborative vision that reads as a single authorial voice, grounded in archetypal storytelling and the kind of contemplative pacing that recalls Herzog or early Tarkovsky without genuflecting to either—this is rigorous genre work aware of its own lineage.
What elevates this modest eight minutes is the decision to let the box remain enigmatic and small—no cosmic reveal, no visual inflation—trusting the performer's face and the sound design of an indifferent wasteland to carry the weight of extinction.