The Cockroach
2024 · 20m · USA
Directed by Mary Pat Bentel
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
After a body-altering car accident, a perfectionist woman struggles to rebuild her sense of self, drawing unexpected courage from the children's song "La Cucaracha" and the cockroach that keeps dancing despite losing a leg. She returns to a beloved dance class to find a new way forward.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The cockroach metaphor is obvious enough that it almost collapses under its own sincerity, but Bentel refuses to let it — she commits to the bit so completely that it becomes genuinely disarming, which is either brilliant subversion or the most earnest thing I've seen all year, and I'm still not sure which.
The synchronized arm-behind-back gesture at the film's climax is a formal sophistication that recalls the vocabulary of contemporary dance cinema, where bodies become language; it's the kind of considered directorial choice that transforms personal narrative into something approaching ritual.
That moment where the entire dance class mirrors the protagonist's constraint — one arm tucked away — is the decision that makes this work: it's economical, it's specific to Bentel's own recovery, and it elevates what could've been maudlin into something that actually earns its catharsis through pure formal clarity.
Reviews
A raw and honest portrayal of disability and loss that bravely confronts suicide, womanhood, and motherhood with disability powerfully threading through the story.
An emotionally resonant short anchored by a powerful gesture of solidarity in its dance-class climax.
Festivals
- Austin Film Festival 2024, Audience Award (also Grand Jury Prize nominee)
- LA Shorts International Film Festival 2024, Best Drama
- HollyShorts Film Festival 2024, Best Editing
- Indy Shorts International Film Festival 2024
- Humanitas Prize 2025, Humanitas Prize (Short Film)