The Snow Leopard
2024 · 15m · USA
Directed by Taylor Joshua Rankin
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
A young composer meets with her exacting composition teacher at a conservatory to finalize a string quartet piece, and what begins as a professional tutorial slowly reveals itself as something more psychologically fraught — a film about mentorship, power, and the violence of creative refinement.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A composer directing a film about composition as unglamorous craft — the meta-authenticity is exactly the kind of formal sincerity that makes short film worth watching.
Taylor Joshua Rankin (himself a working composer) shoots composition as skilled labor rather than divine spark — a Whiplash chamber piece whose refusal to mythologize the mentor-student exchange is the move.
A working composer directing composition as manual labor rather than mythologized creation, with the mentor-student dynamic doing the real work — that anti-Whiplash framing is genuinely fresh. Fifteen minutes feels right for it.
Festivals
- Beverly Hills Film Festival 2024
- Venice Shorts 2024
- San Francisco Short Film Festival 2024