Wayfaring Stranger
2024 · 10m · USA
Directed by Mitra Jouhari
Genres: comedy, experimental
Tones: darkly comic, humorous, melancholic
A heartbroken woman wanders the wilderness narrating her breakup in language that swings from lyrical to vulgar. The interior monologue is the show, and it gets funnier the more unhinged it gets.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Jouhari narrating her own emotional collapse into the trees, half Whitman, half group text. Catharsis with a potty mouth, and I'm here for the rupture.
Poetic wilderness voiceover sabotaged by its own filth is a sturdy comic engine, and Mitra Jouhari is the right performer to mind the contradiction. Three Busy Debras energy aimed at post-breakup Walden is the comparison the film earns.
Lyrical-wilderness voiceover sabotaged by "cum-stained blanket" is the funniest version of poetic comedy — Jouhari undercutting her own register is the entire engine. Plastic sled through the woods is the right comic prop.