With short ZOON
Sophie Linnenbaum’s playful film, her fiction feature debut, is an extraordinary exercise in meta-narrative and metaphor. It imagines a future cast(e) system that divides humans into different levels of characters, from background performer to leading role, and the slippery spectrum that connects them.
Essentially a work of sci-fi, THE ORDINARIES is primarily a work of allegorical magic realism, filtered through an unencumbered love for cinema – this is a film for people with celluloid in their blood. Impromptu dance routines give way to grim dystopia, through social realism, by way of absurdist comedy. It’s a thrilling achievement, wildly inventive and fizzing with the potential of the moment. Don’t be surprised if a talking dog makes an appearance. But the film’s greatest strength is its sense of the profound amid the banal – what does it mean to feel like an outtake in the film of your own life? And can cinema help you find out? THE ORDINARIES may come close to answering those questions.
ZOON (Animated short, Germany, 2022, 4 min.): In the dark swamps of a nocturnal forest, a group of gleaming axolotls is in heat, nuzzling and nibbling one another’s limbs. Soon, a much larger, two-legged forest dweller encounters the lustful group and reaches down to gobble one of the small, shimmering creatures. His plump friends begin to partake as well, and a feast begins. While dawn is slowly breaking, a cheerful game begins higher up in the branches.
