Project Skyborn
2014 · 8m
Directed by Marko Slavnic
Tones: contemplative, tense
A test pilot pushes an experimental aircraft program to its limits, where ambition and risk collide high above the Earth.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's competent test-pilot-pushes-limits material, which is exactly the kind of consensus prestige thriller that puts me to sleep—nothing here subverts the form, just executes it.
A disciplined exercise in tension and restraint, with the formal precision you'd expect from someone understanding the lineage of aviation drama; the craft is assured, if not particularly audacious.
Slavnic's decision to hold on the pilot's face during the critical moment—letting the performance carry the risk rather than cutting away to spectacle—is the kind of specific restraint that makes a low-budget cockpit drama breathe.