The Cordial Agreement
2022 · 10m · Canada
Directed by Gautier Piton, Clément Douillet
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, tense
A couple of tenants visit their landlords — who live in the same building — to discuss the annual rent increase, and the perfect time to speak their truth curdles into a black-comedy nightmare.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A rent negotiation that metastasizes into absurdist horror—the premise is basically a shrug until it isn't, and the film has the guts to let social friction curdle into something genuinely unhinged instead of resolving it like a normal dramedy would.
The formal control here is surgical: Piton and Douillet use the confined space and escalating civility as a pressure chamber, situating themselves squarely in the lineage of uncomfortable-dinner-party cinema while maintaining remarkable compositional clarity across the mounting dread.
The real trick is the tonal pivot—there's a single moment where the conversation shifts from rehearsed politeness to genuine threat, and it's held entirely in performance and framing, no exposition needed, which is exactly how you make ten minutes feel inevitable.