Take Me to Your Influencer
2023 · 6m · UK
Directed by Tom Lincoln
Genres: comedy, satire, sci-fi
An alien arrives on Earth and mistakes a teenage influencer for the planet's leader, putting humanity's fate in the hands of its most popular content creator. A satirical riff on the 'take me to your leader' trope skewering influencer culture.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Finally—someone takes the 'take me to your leader' thing seriously enough to implode it completely. The premise is absurd in exactly the right way: not a wink-wink genre deconstruction, but a genuine collision between sci-fi's oldest trope and the actual power structure of 2023, where a teenager's follower count IS real sovereignty.
A clever inversion of first-contact cinema that knows its lineage but doesn't quite commit to the formal rigor the satire demands; the five-minute format works against the kind of sustained tonal control that would elevate this beyond a well-executed premise into something that resonates across screenings.
The magic lives in trusting that the alien's confusion—mistaking influence for authority—plays itself; Lincoln's restraint in letting narcissism and brand logic do the work instead of underlining the joke makes the stakes feel genuinely unhinged on a shoestring budget.