Prastbarn
2020 · 7m · Denmark
Directed by Joel Stenbäck
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, fantasy
Tones: melancholic, tender, whimsical
In 90s Gothenburg, three brothers — Oskar, Jonathan and Lukas — are dragged to church every Sunday by their priest father. When Oskar rejects his father's sermon, they sneak into the forest for an anime-inspired monster-killing fantasy, until older bullies force them to confront their own weakness.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The anime-fantasy gambit should be a crutch, but Stenbäck weaponizes it as genuine theology — three kids doesn't escape church doctrine through escapism, they accidentally prove it's already inside them, which is genuinely unsettling in a way most coming-of-age shorts aren't brave enough to go.
The tonal architecture here is precisely calibrated: Stenbäck inherits the Scandinavian pastoral-melancholia tradition but splices it with genre in a way that feels earned rather than borrowed, the cut between sermon and forest establishing a visual grammar that programs have been chasing since Bergman.
That moment when the bullies interrupt the fantasy and the camera holds on the boys' faces — no cut, no score swell, just the weight of real vulnerability replacing imagined heroism — that's the decision that transforms a neat premise into something that actually stings.