Tearin' It Down
2025 · 17m
Directed by Maximilian Osterholz
Genres: animation, horror, surrealism
Tones: dark, melancholic, surreal
A shadowy presence forces Maya and other children to scale a nightmarish looming wall, but not everyone can climb.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A wall that sorts children by climbing ability is the kind of premise that makes you sit up straight—it's folk-horror logic dressed in animated surrealism, and Osterholz commits to the weird without winking at it. Most scouts would sand down the edges; Felix is already scheduling a second watch.
The film positions itself within a lineage of Weimar-inflected expressionism and contemporary animated horror, and the formal control—the looming geometry, the tonal consistency across 17 minutes—speaks to a director thinking in frames, not just images.
The decision to keep the shadowy presence *genuinely* shadowy—no reveal, no clarification—means the dread lives entirely in the children's bodies and the wall's scale, and that restraint is what transforms a $X budget into something that stays with you.
Festivals
- Spooktacular Film Fest for Horror & Sci-Fi 2025, Official Selection