While the Kettle Boils
2018 · 10m · USA
Directed by Nick Shultz
Genres: experimental, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
Waiting for water to boil, a young man slips into a state of distorted reality. A surreal experimental short riding a trippy soundscape and an enigmatic frame.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Conventional plot? Sit down — Shultz makes a whole short out of a teapot and gets away with it. That's the move: dare the audience to be bored, then disorient them before the kettle whistles.
Domestic surrealism through a boiling kettle is canonical Lynch terrain; the soundscape work claim toward Martel is doing a lot of heavy lifting in a short form. Want to believe.
A kettle-boiling reverie that warps into a suit-wearing stranger reciting bad jokes — riding hard on soundscape and tone is the right move at the right scale. Trippy domestic surrealism if it lands.