The Workplace
2021 · 10m
Directed by Carlyn Hudson
Genres: dark comedy, satire, sci-fi
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, melancholic
In a future where machines do the real work, lucky humans still clock in to perform office routines that give their days meaning.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A premise that should be trite—automation's existential dread—gets flipped into something genuinely unsettling: what if humans *need* the theater of work more than work needs them? Hudson commits to the bit hard enough that it stops being satire and becomes documentary.
The film's formal restraint—its commitment to deadpan office routine as the container for philosophical inquiry—places it squarely in the lineage of Koreeda and Jia Zhangke, though the sci-fi wrapper could feel decorative if the execution weren't so precisely calibrated.
What elevates this beyond concept is Hudson's decision to let the camera linger on the *uselessness* of each gesture without scoring it as ironic—the actors commit to data entry and spreadsheets with the gravity of ritual, and that tonal restraint is the only reason the premise lands.
Reviews
A dystopian office satire in which humans preserve mundane workplace rituals after technology has taken over employment, played for both comedy and melancholy.