Topfpalmen (Potted Palm Trees)
2020 · 20m · Austria
Directed by Rosa Friedrich
Tones: absurdist, melancholic
At a garish wedding, seventeen-year-old deaf Betti — pregnant by the groom — navigates the chaotic celebration while her mother gets drunk and tensions between love and responsibility threaten to erupt.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Deaf pregnant teen at a chaotic wedding, sound design from her POV — Festen with a sensory reframe. Austrian misery comedies usually mean business; willing to be uncomfortable for 20 minutes.
Friedrich routing a chaotic wedding through a deaf seventeen-year-old's sensory perspective — Vinterberg's Festen with the audio architecture rebuilt from the protagonist outward. Twenty minutes of compressed familial pressure is the right scale for this register.
Sound design built around the deaf protagonist's sensory perspective is the load-bearing craft choice for a 20-minute wedding-chaos film — it converts ensemble noise into subjective suffocation. The Festen comparison only works if the audio mix actually trusts the conceit.
Reviews
Overwhelming and incredibly engaging, the film feels like we've secured an RSVP to the raucous celebration, allowing us to witness its crazy energy firsthand, as if we were really there.
You wouldn't expect a tragedy at first behind this shrill-glittery surface. But I hope after this sweet candy the tragic fate of Betti will even taste more bitter.
Festivals
- Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 2020
- Festival du Nouveau Cinéma Montréal 2020
- Vienna Independent Shorts (VIS) 2020
- Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival 2022
- Filmschoolfest Munich 2021
- Prague Short Film Festival
- Tramway Film Festival 2024