The Self Tape
2024 · 7m · USA
Directed by Michael Angelo Covino
Tones: dark, darkly comic, tender
An actress enlists her ex to help her film a self-tape audition — a premise that uses the performative formality of the audition ritual to excavate the unresolved emotional wreckage of the relationship.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Using the self-tape audition — cinema's most self-consciously performative format — as the container for a real breakup is such a neat formal trap that I'm annoyed it hasn't been done a hundred times already.
Covino weaponizes the audition form as a forensic instrument on a dead relationship — the oscillation between performed and actual sincerity is exactly the conceptual game The Climb fans expect. Six minutes, ruthlessly efficient.
Michael Angelo Covino (The Climb) using the self-tape audition format to surface ex-relationship wreckage — six minutes where performed and actual sincerity blur. Tight, specific, Covino knows what he's doing.
Festivals
- Palm Springs International ShortFest 2024