The Director
2022 · 13m · Norway
Directed by Linda Gathu, Ingrid Liavaag
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, tender
A young Black female director is invited to helm an afrofuturistic play at Norway's National Theater, only to discover the institution is more interested in what she represents than in her actual artistic vision — a sharp satire of performative diversity in the cultural industry.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Satire of diversity theater at the National Theater, written by the people getting tokenized — fine, that's the version I actually want. The Sorry to Bother You comparison is wishful, but improvised authenticity beats the usual liberal hand-wringing.
An improvisation-derived satire of institutional tokenism within the very institutions that anointed it; one thinks of Östlund's drawn knife, sharpened by lived experience. The premise risks self-congratulation, but the bittersweetness suggests a more interesting register.
Improvised dialogue from actors mining their own institutional experiences is exactly the right method for satirizing tokenism — at 13:03 you have room for the slow internalization arc the synopsis promises without rushing the bitterness. National Theater as setting is a sharp pick.
Reviews
With Regissøren, writer/director duo Ingrid Liavaag and Linda Gathu craft a clever satire of the current cultural industry where inclusivity is (sometimes) more performative than genuine.
Festivals
- Norwegian Short Film Festival (Kortfilmfestivalen) 2022, Norwegian Film Critics' Award