The Wishgranter
2016 · 5m · Estados Unidos
Directed by Echo Wu, John McDonald, Kal Athannassov
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy, romance
Tones: contemplative, surreal, whimsical
Set in a world where wishes are granted by creatures that live under fountains, an apathetic wishgranter is forced to rise to the surface to grant a wish for love.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A fountain-dwelling wish-granter with commitment issues? That's genuinely weird enough to work, but the film plays it mostly straight when the real subversion would've been leaning into the absurdity—it feels like it's one draft away from actually being the contrarian move it's attempting.
Wu, McDonald, and Athannassov have crafted something with clear lineage to whimsical fantasy—there's deliberate texture in the world-building and a restraint in the romance that suggests awareness of tone—though the execution feels more promising than fully realized.
The decision to keep the wishgranter almost catatonic through most of the runtime, then let a single moment of genuine connection crack that apathy open, is what transforms this from cute premise into something that actually lands—that performance restraint and the edit around it is everything.