Tate's Parade
2025 · 10m · USA
Directed by Theo Matza
Tones: absurdist, tender, whimsical
Thanksgiving morning: a foster family of agoraphobic shut-ins sends out their bravest teen to procure a turkey while Macy's Parade balloons drift through the streets above. A holiday film that treats the holiday like a trial by combat.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A Thanksgiving film about shut-ins venturing out under giant inflatable Snoopy — that's a premise with structural integrity. Most holiday shorts go for warmth; this one earns it sideways.
An agoraphobic foster family plus Macy's Parade is a combination nobody else was going to write, and Matza apparently treats the holiday as trial by combat. Wes Anderson dysfunction at Charles Burnett block-portrait scale is an ambitious framing.
Agoraphobic foster family sending out their bravest teen to hunt a Thanksgiving turkey while Macy's balloons drift overhead — that's a combo nobody else writes, and the apartment-as-bunker against the parade-as-world is a perfect structural opposition.
Reviews
Matza directs a tender and strange account of the American Holiday.