The Scent of Beetroot and the People Who Live Forever
2023 · 13m · Germany
Directed by Maren Wiese, Petra Stipetić
Genres: animation, dark comedy, sci-fi
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
A scientist discovers that the scent of beetroot grants immortality — and as everyone starts sniffing it, death becomes impossible and a magenta haze swallows the planet.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A premise that commits fully to its own absurdity—beetroot as the instrument of civilizational collapse, immortality as catastrophe—without winking at the audience or apologizing for the magenta haze. This is the kind of subversive sci-fi that makes you uncomfortable because it actually *means* it.
The animation language here situates itself deliberately within a lineage of Eastern European experimental cinema, balancing surrealist worldbuilding against the rigorous constraint of a single, elegant metaphor—immortality rendered as chromatic suffocation.
The decision to let the color overwhelm the frame rather than fighting it with clarity is what sells the whole thing; that choice to surrender the image to magenta instead of maintaining visual hierarchy on a short budget elevates the entire concept from clever premise to something genuinely haunting.
Reviews
A scientist discovers the key to immortality: the scent of beetroot. Through its excessive use, an impenetrable magenta atmosphere soon envelops the entire planet.