PREP
2023 · 14m · USA
Directed by Raymond Knudsen
Genres: documentary, drama, experimental
Tones: dark, melancholic, surreal, tense
A competitive bodybuilder moves through the ritualistic hell of contest prep — extreme dieting, grueling training, choreographed fantasies — while the film excavates the childhood trauma and disordered eating that lie beneath the muscle.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A bodybuilder film that correctly understands bodybuilding as a psychedelic experience and treats acid techno as the appropriate soundtrack for dissociating from your own body — finally, someone gets it.
Knudsen collapses bodybuilding autobiography into Gaspar Noé-style overhead choreography, vlogs, and black-void confessionals — the film enacts the dissociation it describes. The Climax comparison is earned formally, not just tonally.
Collapsing autobiographical doc, POV vlog, and Gaspar Noé-style overhead choreography into a 14-minute bodybuilding-as-eating-disorder excavation is the kind of structural maximalism that either fragments meaningfully or just shows off. The festival run (Indie Memphis Audience, Sound Design wins) suggests Knudsen actually pulled the dissociation through the form.
Reviews
Undeniably effective — the juxtaposition of the fragile and innocent with the hulking and the aggressive is poignant, and the experimental approach is both adrenaline-inducing and emotionally resonant.
Festivals
- Indie Memphis Film Festival 2023, Audience Choice: Best Departures Short
- Tallahassee Film Festival 2023, Florida Filmmaker Award
- Bend Film Festival 2023