Troy
2023 · 16m · USA
Directed by Mike Donahue
A couple in a thin-walled NYC apartment becomes unwilling intimates of their neighbor's sex life — then his heartbreak.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Couple eavesdrops on neighbor's loud sex then his heartbreak — Mike Donahue plus New Yorker Screening Room is a vibe stamp, and the sound-through-wall conceit can actually carry sixteen minutes. Charmed.
Donahue's New Yorker Screening Room piece conveying an entire emotional arc through walls heard from next door is the Holofcener-Baumbach apartment grammar refined to a single sustained sonic device. Sixteen minutes of trusting an audience is the right ambition.
16:14 Mike Donahue New Yorker pick — using the wall as the entire emotional interface forces sound design and reaction performance to do all the narrative work. That's the kind of formal constraint The New Yorker Screening Room curates for.