UGLY BOBBY
2026 · 2m
Directed by Ania Gauer
Genres: comedy, coming-of-age
Tones: darkly comic, whimsical
Since childhood, Bobby has nourished a single dream: to win the highly prestigious Mister Splendeur contest — and today is the big day.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A beauty pageant short about an underdog named Bobby should be unbearable—instead Gauer leans into the absurdist premise hard enough that it becomes genuinely weird, which is the only move that could've saved it from treacle.
The whimsy-meets-dark-comedy tonality sits in a lineage of contemporary shorts playing against coming-of-age sentimentality, though the execution would need to demonstrate considerable formal precision to land in that conversation.
In two minutes, whatever visual or tonal choice Gauer makes in the pageant sequence itself—the specific way she frames Bobby's moment—will determine whether this lives as singular or slight; that's where the entire film turns on a single decision.