This Must Be The Place
2019 · 8m
Directed by Merlin Camozzi
Genres: coming-of-age, experimental, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
Seeking to join a group of low-end urban witches, Bonnie must decide how far she is willing to go to learn their craft and find a home.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Low-end urban witches as a coming-of-age initiation is exactly the kind of premise that makes everyone else nervous — half genre pastiche, half genuine belonging crisis — and Camozzi leans into the surreal discomfort instead of winking at it, which is why it works.
The film sits comfortably in a lineage of experimental fantasy shorts concerned with ritual and community, but its contemplative pacing and deliberate surrealism occasionally outpace the narrative architecture that would make the stakes fully legible.
There's a moment where Bonnie's decision to participate in the witches' practice stops being plot and becomes pure sensory commitment—the sound design and her stillness do all the work of showing us what 'belonging' actually costs her, which is a $0 choice that reframes the entire film.
Reviews
It looks good, it's well filmed, and nicely paced. It's absolutely worth the eight minutes.