WomXn, The Nightmare of You Know Who
2019 · 5m · France
Directed by Adrien Gystère Peskine, Eden Tinto Collins
Genres: experimental, musical, sci-fi
Tones: darkly comic, surreal, theatrical
A gender-ambiguous Afrofuturist superheroine is summoned from outer space by a dolphin to stop an imminent police killing.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A dolphin summons a gender-ambiguous Afrofuturist cop-killer—yes, that's the actual premise—and it somehow *works* as a 5-minute musical fever dream that makes you question why nobody else is making this. The fact that it exists at all, let alone with this much theatrical confidence, is exactly the kind of subversive refusal I live for.
The film's formal ambition—layering sci-fi, musical, and experimental registers into a coherent surreal statement—suggests serious engagement with avant-garde lineage, though the tonal volatility and compressed runtime leave little room for the sustained compositional rigor that would elevate this into the canon it's reaching for.
The decision to center the dolphin as the *actual authority figure* summoning intervention reframes the entire power dynamic of the narrative, and that single conceptual choice—played straight in an otherwise absurdist register—does the work that a much bigger budget couldn't buy.