Trash Scab
2021 · 8m · USA
Directed by Philip Steiger
Genres: dark comedy, satire, sci-fi
Tones: darkly comic, provocative, tense
An entrepreneur pivots with the market during a dystopian present — pandemic raging, curfew enforced, police disbanded — finding the gap between desperation and hustle uncomfortably small. A scarily plausible vision of capitalism adapting to collapse.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The premise literally is 'entrepreneur pivots with the market' — and the market in question is societal collapse. Eight minutes of satire so plausible it stings.
The dystopia uncomfortably close to our recent reality is exactly the problem with most pandemic shorts — too topical to age, too soon for distance. Steiger's anger sounds real, but Boots Riley comparisons are heavy luggage.
A dystopian pivot-with-the-market entrepreneur during a not-quite-fictional collapse, viscerally shot and edited — when the world-building hugs too close to recent reality to feel ironic, the satire actually cuts.