The Cost of Hugging
2024 · 9m · United Kingdom
Directed by Louis Bhose
Genres: comedy, dark comedy, drama
Tones: darkly comic, humorous, melancholic
In the bar of a hotel, Erica — who hugs pandas for a living and is utterly miserable — is chatted up by hidden-camera TV star Jacques Burton, and their conversation unspools into an unexpected exchange about work, purpose, and pandas.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A panda-hugger's existential crisis is exactly the kind of absurd, unmarketable premise that makes lesser scouts run screaming—which is precisely why Bhose nails it. The film refuses to punch down at either character; instead it uses the ridiculous job as a trojan horse for real loneliness, and that collision is where the subversion lives.
The two-hander format recalls a lineage of chamber comedies—Linklater, Reichardt—where conversation and restraint do the heavy lifting, and Bhose demonstrates formal control in how he lets silence and awkwardness breathe between the laughs. It's a film aware of its own tonal tightrope.
The entire short hinges on the decision to play Erica's misery as *genuine* rather than ironic—one performance choice that transforms what could've been a cute premise into something that actually stings. That commitment to melancholy underneath the absurdity is what elevates it.
Festivals
- Toronto International Film Festival 2024
- Aspen Shortsfest 2024
- Galway Film Fleadh 2024
- London Short Film Festival 2025