The Agent
2023 · 10m · USA
Directed by Emily Frances Kaplan
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
A C-list Hollywood talent agent presides over pay-to-play audition rooms, soaking in the only power he has left while desperate actors monologue at him. The film treats his small kingdom as a confession booth that flatters him into deeper emptiness.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Every indie short wants to skewer Hollywood; most of them flinch. This one parks the camera on a small, miserable man in a folding chair and lets actors humiliate themselves for him — that's a real movie.
Structured as a string of audition monologues delivered to a man who barely deserves to hear them, with the actors doing the heavy emotional lifting while he sits there — that's a real conceptual frame, not just a sad-industry premise. Glengarry rot.
Structuring the whole short as audition monologues delivered to a man who barely deserves to hear them — letting actors do the heavy lifting while the agent just sits there is the cruelest possible formal choice for a pay-to-play premise. Smart.
Reviews
A dark character study about an aging and forlorn man in a position of perceived power.