The Bronswik Affair
1978 · 23m · Canada
Directed by Robert Awad, André Leduc
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, provocative
Ordinary consumers fall into absurd buying frenzies, exposing how advertising manufactures desire for things nobody needs.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A 1978 NFB piece that turns consumer culture inside out through sheer absurdist pressure—no moralizing, just people possessed by the logic of the marketplace until it breaks. Most scouts would file this under 'dated satire,' which is exactly why it's essential.
Leduc and Awad position themselves squarely in the structural cinema tradition, using escalation and formal repetition as their satirical apparatus, with a rigor that recalls early Godard's consumer-critique moments, though the execution feels more locked in its own historical moment than timeless.
The film's kill-shot is the decision to let the buying frenzies *accelerate* without ironic commentary—just sound design and editing pushing reality fractionally further each time until the audience feels the logic rather than understands it, which is a production choice that costs nothing but discipline.