Regulation
2019 · 11m
Directed by Ryan Patch
Tones: contemplative, dark, provocative
A future social worker enforces the law that every child has a right to be happy, forcing a mood-regulating patch on a girl whose mother resists.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A sci-fi premise that actually commits to its own absurdity—enforced happiness via bureaucratic patch is exactly the kind of inversion that should make you uncomfortable, and Patch refuses to let the audience off easy by picking a side. Most scouts would sand down the edges; Felix watches it get sharper.
The film positions itself squarely in the lineage of cautionary speculative work (echoes of Gattaca's biometric determinism, High Life's bodily autonomy), and the formal restraint in the final act—the lingering shots on the mother's face—demonstrates real curatorial control over tone and implication.
The decision to shoot the patch application scene in static wide shots rather than cutting between faces creates a kind of bureaucratic distance that makes the violation feel systemic rather than personal, and that single formal choice carries the entire argument of the film.