Sheeple
2012 · 1m · España
Directed by Alejandro Pérez Blanco
Tones: contemplative, dark
A man observes the people around him as 'directionless automata, with lost gaze', with predictable and mechanical lives, incapable of thinking; he perceives himself as the only real person in this world of 'sheep'.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The whole misanthropic-protagonist-sees-through-the-veil thing is tired, but Pérez Blanco gets away with it by making the conceit so *literal* and absurd—the actual mechanics of dehumanization rendered in 60 seconds without a drop of sentimentality. It's contemptuous in exactly the right way.
A economical execution of the satire-via-observation lineage stretching back through Tati and Koreeda, where the formal distance *is* the argument; the pacing and framing discipline keep what could be heavy-handed premise afloat as genuine social critique.
The entire essay lives in the editing rhythm—how Pérez Blanco lets the mundane crowd footage breathe just long enough to feel suffocating, then cuts to the protagonist's face to collapse that distance. That timing choice is what makes the misanthropy sting instead of preach.