Squirrel Island (la tierra de las ardillas)
2016 · 21m · Reino Unido
Directed by Astrid Goldsmith
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy, thriller
Tones: absurdist, dark, whimsical
A renegade grey squirrel and a hunted acorn are trapped on a hostile and mysterious red squirrel island, when they uncover a horrifying plot to eradicate all grey squirrels.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A grey squirrel refugee thriller with ecological genocide undertones—nobody else would have the audacity to play this premise completely straight, and that's exactly why it works. This is the kind of film that makes you defend it at parties because the logline sounds ridiculous until you realize Goldsmith's actually made something genuinely unsettling.
Goldsmith situates this squirrel-noir within a lineage of animal fables used for political allegory, though the execution leans more toward genre pastiche than formal innovation—competent dark comedy framing, but the craft doesn't quite transcend its whimsical premise into something cinematically argued.
The entire film pivots on a single sound design choice: the acorn itself becomes a character through ambient texture and proximity, which transforms what could've been a gimmick premise into something with genuine stakes and weight on a modest budget.