Wings
2017 · 4m · Dinamarca
Directed by Christoffer Andersen
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, family
Tones: contemplative, tender
When a young boy's toy airplane gets stuck in a tree, he is forced to face his deepest fear: the fear of heights.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A toy plane in a tree forcing confrontation with height phobia—sounds like a greeting card, and it probably is one, which is exactly why I'd pass. The premise does the work; the film doesn't need to.
Andersen locates this within a clear lineage of Scandinavian coming-of-age minimalism, and the 4-minute constraint demonstrates admirable formal discipline, though the emotional architecture feels somewhat familiar within that tradition.
The decision to make the climb itself the entire visual and emotional payload—no cutaways, no safety net metaphors—transforms a simple setup into something genuinely held; that commitment to unbroken tension in such a short window is what makes this work.