The Big Draw
2023 · 20m · Canada
Directed by Nick Harwood
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, melancholic
A directionless college student named Jonah, paralyzed by writer's block and existential malaise, stumbles onto an online self-help technique promising to cure modern male aimlessness. The film is a portrait of the familiar literary archetype of the disaffected young man updated for the age of the internet, climate anxiety, and the manosphere.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Disaffected young man with writer's block stumbles onto manosphere self-help, directed by a SOPHIE / Charli music-video guy with no dialogue. The form is the bet, and the subject matter is overdue for a serious take.
Harwood — known for SOPHIE and Charli XCX videos — engages the manosphere without naming Peterson or Tate, in a wordless narrative debut. The discretion is the strategy; whether the form sustains twenty minutes is the question.
Music video director (SOPHIE, Blood Orange, Charli XCX) doing his narrative debut without dialogue while engaging manosphere ideology without ever naming names — that's craft restraint and topical courage at once. 20:29 is long for wordless, so it has to earn it.
Reviews
A contemporary portrait of a familiar literary character — the disaffected young man seeking meaning — updated for the modern age of the internet, climate anxiety, and Porn Hub.
Festivals
- Ciclope Festival 2024
- Woodstock Film Festival 2024