When You’re Here, You’re Pizza!
2023 · 7m
Directed by Tim Schwagel
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic
River orders the same pizza every day. What could possibly go wrong? Full unwavering dedication to a brand is always the answer — until the routine breaks.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A pizza-order-as-existential-commitment bit that could've been a throwaway sketch actually commits to its own absurdist logic—Schwagel refuses to wink at the audience, which is either brilliant restraint or midwit sincerity, and I genuinely can't tell which way the film wants it.
The deadpan ritualism and structural repetition situate this squarely in the lineage of Buñuel's obsessive minutiae and contemporary absurdist comedy shorts, though the execution feels slightly too on-the-nose to achieve the kind of formal precision that would elevate it beyond its premise.
There's one moment—the exact beat where the routine fractures—where Schwagel trusts the cut to do the emotional work instead of explaining it, and that single edit choice transforms what could've been a one-note gag into something that actually lands.
Reviews
Im Kurzfilm „When You’re Here, You’re Pizza!“ ist exakt diese Dauerwiederholung die Grundzutat der von Tim Schwagel von New Neighbor inszenierten Geschichte. Doch dann kommt alles irgendwie anders an… „River orders the same pizza every day.