Villain
2023 · 10m · UK
Directed by Sparky Tehnsuko
Tones: dark, melancholic, tense
In Iron Age Britain, an orphaned teenage girl sets out to avenge her mother by slaying the dragon that torched her home — only to find a scaly child waiting in the beast's lair. A wordless meditation on the cyclical nature of revenge and victimhood.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A medieval revenge story that pulls the rug out from under itself — except it does it *without dialogue*, which means Tehnsuko trusted the audience to feel the moral vertigo in silence. That's the move that makes this land instead of preach.
The wordless form echoes a lineage of visual storytelling that reaches back through Bresson and into silent cinema, yet Tehnsuko stakes it on a contemporary emotional register: the moment empathy fractures certainty. Formally disciplined and generationally aware.
The entire film pivots on discovering a *child* in the dragon's lair—a single production choice that collapses the revenge narrative into something morally irresolvable, and Tehnsuko executes it with the kind of restraint and performance specificity that makes nine minutes feel like nine hours of reckoning.
Reviews
Villain has a strong aesthetic, a compelling atmosphere and a thoughtful hand behind the camera. However, the story doesn't feel as absorbing as it could be.
The film held us rapt for its efficient runtime.