The Launch
2024 · 9m
Directed by KK Apple
Tones: darkly comic, humorous, theatrical
A fictional behind-the-scenes look at the Windows 95 launch presentation: when a ruthless tech ubernerd faces pushback right before the big launch, he must hype up the team — and himself — before going onstage. All the business nerds are played by women.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A tech-bro origin myth told backwards through the lens of female power brokers—subverting both the hagiography AND the gender assumption in one move, which is exactly the kind of premise that makes people squirm before they realize it's genius.
The film sits in conversation with a lineage of workplace comedies and corporate satire, but the formal restraint of the behind-the-scenes framing and the precision of the casting reversal suggests a filmmaker thinking deliberately about how genre expectations shape narrative authority.
The choice to make every executive in the room a woman—not as a message film, but as the quiet structural decision that reframes the entire power dynamic—is the kind of elegant pivot that transforms a 9-minute premise into something that lingers.
Reviews
KK Apple bietet uns mit „The Launch“ einen herrlichen fiktiven Blick hinter die Kulissen der Präsentation von Windows 95. Dabei bekommen wir die intensiven Minuten vor dem Launch zu sehen, in dem alle Business-Nerds von Frauen gespielt werden.