The Familiar
2023 · 10m · USA
Directed by Julian Quentin
Genres: experimental, LGBTQ+, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
An extraterrestrial crash-lands on an alien world that won't accept it and keeps trying to make connections that don't take. Stark black-and-white sequences — a family picnic, blindfolded figures on a staircase — accumulate into a cosmic metaphor for being the wrong shape for any room.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Black-and-white alien-as-outsider shorts are a dime a dozen at student festivals — but blindfolded figures on a staircase is a specific image, and specific images are what separate the real ones from the posers. In.
Monochrome alien cinema as queer outsider parable — closer to Maya Deren than Spielberg, refusing to be legible to either crowd — is a real artistic position. Quentin's stark B&W rendering of being-the-wrong-shape-for-any-room is ambitious.
Monochrome alien-as-queer-outsider parable with picnic and blindfolded-staircase tableaus is committed to its own register — closer to Maya Deren than Spielberg and not interested in being legible to either crowd is the right posture. Brave.
Reviews
Quentin's film is a potent, self-assured vision, a cosmic metaphor for life as an outsider.