Silly Little Plastic Cat
2026 · 12m · USA
Directed by Zack Grant
Genres: documentary, mystery
Tones: contemplative, whimsical
For over 40 years, bright orange Garfield novelty phones have washed ashore in Brittany, France, from a shipping container lost at sea in the 1980s.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone's going to be charmed by the whimsy of orange cats washing up on a French beach for 40 years, but Grant knows better—this is really about how capitalism literally litters the world, and he lets the absurdity do the heavy lifting without preaching.
A film that understands its own lineage: the documentary-as-found-object tradition from Marker through contemporary essayists, with the formal discipline to let the premise speak without sentiment, each Garfield phone a small meditation on time and human imprint.
The decision to treat each washed-up phone as an artifact rather than a punchline—letting silence and tide and texture carry the weight instead of narration—is what transforms a logline into something that actually sticks with you.
Festivals
- Tribeca X Festival 2026, Shortlisted