Stucco
2019 · 17m · USA
Directed by Janina Gavankar, Russo Schelling
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
An agoraphobic woman discovers something in a hole in her wall that mirrors her own psychological unraveling.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Agoraphobic woman finds a hole in her wall — 22 MILLION views on ALTER. Wall-hole as objective correlative is a smart phrase for what's probably a perfectly fine jump-scare delivery system. Skeptical.
An SXSW Special Jury winner with a serious cast — Janina Gavankar co-directs her own performance opposite Ealy and Powley, and the Yellow Wallpaper lineage is precisely right for the agoraphobia premise. The 22M ALTER view count is platform reach, not curatorial verdict, but the festival recognition is real.
ALTER upload, 22M views, SXSW Special Jury Winner — the audience footprint and award are real, but the description and content are gated behind age-restriction. Gavankar + Schelling directing the agoraphobia-as-architecture conceit is promising; I'd want to confirm the runtime claim (17:29 implied) against the metadata.
Festivals
- SXSW 2020, Special Jury Prize