The Prize
2026 · 14m
Directed by Matteo Capatti, Lorenzo Mazzucchi
Genres: drama, horror, surrealism
Tones: dark, melancholic, surreal
A struggling 40-year-old artist refuses a mysterious prize delivered during a global electromagnetic storm, and reality begins to crumble around him.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A 40-year-old artist rejecting a prize while reality liquefies around him—this is the kind of premise that makes you sit up because it refuses the obvious (desperation, acceptance, redemption arc). Capatti and Mazzucchi are playing with refusal itself as a horror mechanism, which is genuinely strange.
The surrealist vocabulary here is deliberate and controlled, working in conversation with body horror and cosmic dread lineages; what interests me is how disciplined the crumble is—whether the formal choices (editing, sound design during the electromagnetic collapse) anchor the metaphysical chaos or surrender to it.
The decision to make the protagonist's refusal the fulcrum rather than the electromagnetic storm itself is what makes this sing—it's a small reframing that puts agency and psychological resistance at the center of what could have been generic sci-fi deterioration.
Festivals
- Spooktacular Film Fest for Horror & Sci-Fi 2026, Official Selection