The Ballad of Maddog Quinn
2022 · 14m · New Zealand
Directed by Matt Inns
In a dusty post-apocalyptic dystopia called The State, an outlaw gunslinger wages a one-man war against a tyrannical regime — armoured airship, robot bartender and all — on a quest to save what he holds dear.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a western, it's sci-fi, it's Leone-flavored — and honestly, it mostly just lands as a well-executed genre exercise rather than something that actually breaks the mold or makes you rethink what either genre can do. The premise is solid, but it plays it too straight.
Inns understands the weight of Leone's visual language and transfers it into practical sci-fi miniatures with genuine formal authority — the kind of craft decision that signals a director aware of lineage, building something that respects the western myth while reframing it through the dystopian frontier. It's the work of a filmmaker thinking seriously about how genre tradition can be extended, not just recycled.
The real move here is Inns betting everything on practical effects in a 14-minute runtime — miniatures and built sets where a smaller budget would've defaulted to digital — and that constraint becomes the whole aesthetic, giving the thing a tactile, earned weight that makes the myth feel real instead of just borrowed.
Reviews
This has an impressive amount of kick ass action scenes in it for only 15 minutes, along with clever production design & props. If looks like if Mad Max was a western, with the same kind of post-apocalyptic vibe. I really dig it.
Heart is certainly the word that comes to mind when unravelling The Ballad of Maddog Quinn — delivered through some kinetic, old-school filmmaking.
Festivals
- Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival 2023
- Madeira Fantastic Film Festival 2023, Best International Short Film