Portrait 001: Security Guard
2026 · 10m · USA
Directed by Tanner D. Masseth
Genres: animation, drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
A security guard walks his old beat in an abandoned strip mall, narrating his existential drift while his 3D-animated body levitates and warps over the dead parking lot.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
An animated security guard floating through a dead strip mall, narrating his way into oblivion — this is the suburban afterlife I keep trying to warn people about. Finally a film that takes the vacant parking lot seriously.
3D animation deployed for working-class existential portraiture rather than spectacle — David OReilly's CGI ennui crossed with Wiseman's narration is a genuinely fresh formal gesture.
3D animation for quiet existential portraiture instead of spectacle — a body that levitates and distorts in time with its own loneliness in a dead strip mall. That's the kind of formal-medium mismatch that pays off big.
Reviews
Despite some unexpected humor owing to the odd movements of the man, we can't help but have sympathy for his struggle, so earnestly articulated in his narration.