SHOTPLAYER
2024 · 22m · USA
Directed by Sam Shainberg
Genres: documentary
Tones: melancholic, surreal, tender
NYC's most notorious subway pickpocket, Wilfred Rose, returns to the system after years away and, in a fever dream of recollection, dissects his forty-year relationship to the act that ruled his life.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Shainberg turns a retired pickpocket's subway return into a meditation on craft, obsolescence, and the city that made him — the reenactments are so precise they double as elegies.
A pickpocket returning to the subway as a "fever dream of recollection" — 22 minutes is a long fever. But genuine criminal craft documentation is rarer than the festivals deserve, so begrudgingly: yes.
Shainberg structures this pickpocket profile as a fever dream of recollection, with reenactments detailed enough to function as craft documentation of an obsolete subway skill. Tangerine-style street ethnography with genuine formal ambition.
Reviews
Shotplayer is an excellent character study of a thief and his city simultaneously.
Festivals
- South by Southwest 2024