Pyse
2013 · 13m · Norway
Directed by Siri Rutlin
Genres: coming-of-age, dark comedy
Tones: darkly comic, tense
Idunn stays home alone for the first time while her big brother plots to frighten her — until the story turns the question of who is the real 'sissy' upside down.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A sibling psych-out that weaponizes gender shame and flips the script so hard the 'tormentor' becomes the real victim—this is exactly the kind of premise that feels obvious in hindsight but subversive as hell while it's unfolding, and most scouts would've filed it under 'cute kid short' and moved on.
Rutlin constructs a taut moral inversion with real precision, letting the dark comedy build through restraint rather than spectacle, positioning the piece in a lineage of coming-of-age narratives that use cruelty as the engine for self-discovery.
The payoff hinges entirely on Rutlin's decision to hold the camera steady on the brother's face in the final moment—that single refusal to cut away, letting his realization bloom silently, is what transforms a genre exercise into something that lands with genuine weight.