The Next Big Thing - Montreal

The scouts

A 54-minute doc about comedians chasing validation at a famous festival sounds like the most predictable prestige-doc setup imaginable — but Battle's willingness to sit in the *failure* and ambition without cutting away is genuinely unsettling, a refusal to make these people legible or likable that most filmmakers would've softened by minute ten.

Battle positions this within a lineage of competition documentaries and behind-the-scenes showbiz portraiture, but what distinguishes it is the formal patience — the editing resists montage-driven momentum, instead layering awkward silences and half-formed pitches into something that feels like a document of desperation itself, not just a record of it.

The film's central decision to stay *close* to the comedians during their worst moments — not the rehearsal room polish, not the stage success, but the hotel room doubt — transforms what could've been a glossy behind-the-scenes into something that trusts the raw material to speak, which is technically a choice about distance and framing that costs nothing but changes everything.