trash moth
2024 · 10m · USA
Directed by Michael Santos
Genres: drama, experimental
Tones: absurdist, dark, provocative
A Mini-DV found-footage descent following a young drifter whose handheld adventures curdle from goofy to genuinely unsettling, picking up hooligans and a homeless man along the way. Sporadic cuts, abrupt zooms, intentional ugliness.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The kind of film that makes festival programmers nervous and that's exactly the recommendation. Camcorder ugliness with actual teeth — no irony shield, no apology.
Mini-DV degradation as narrative device rather than nostalgia — Santos weaponizes camcorder grime in the Trash Humpers lineage, and the 4K restoration of lo-fi is the right contradiction. Genuinely unsettling.
Mini-DV found-footage 4K-restored — the lo-fi degradation as narrative device rather than nostalgia bait. Sporadic cuts and intentional ugliness on a drifter's curdling adventures is a real formal commitment to discomfort.
Reviews
Uncomfortably compelling and unpredictable.