Soupe
2017 · 1m · Tunisia
Directed by Rami Jarboui
Genres: dark comedy, drama, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, provocative
A young man tries to find a way to salt his soup when there's no salt left, in a sociopolitical critique of his situation.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A one-minute film about salt as geopolitical metaphor—absurdist enough to actually mean something, dark enough to make you uncomfortable laughing. Jarboui refuses the easy punchline and commits fully to the bit's logic, which is exactly when satire gets teeth.
The economy of form here sits squarely in the lineage of European absurdist cinema, though the execution occasionally prioritizes provocation over the formal precision that would elevate it into genuinely timeless work. Worth noting as a clear example of late-2010s political satire in miniature.
That the entire weight of systemic critique lands on a single, sustained close-up of someone staring at unsalted soup—refusing to cut, refusing to look away—is the decision that transforms what could've been a sketch into something that actually haunts you.