Underplayed Gems
The whole movie catalogue

Films and series, searchable by what they are

← Back to the shop

The Argument (with annotations) (2017)

The Argument (with annotations) poster
Directed by
Daniel Cockburn
Country
Canada
Runtime
19h 55m
Elsewhere
IMDb

How it feels

A video essay about an argument is revealed partway through to be a fictional work created by an elderly professor. The film plays with the audience's expectations about what is real and what is staged.

cerebralunsettlingmetafictionalexperimentalslow-burndryacademiccontemplative

What happens

The Argument (With Annotations) is a 2017 Canadian-British short experimental drama film written, directed, and edited by video artist Daniel Cockburn. The short's first half attempts to deceive the audience into thinking it is a non-fictional video essay, revealing itself mid-way to be a work of fiction, the essay actually the work of the film's protagonist, an elderly professor (Clare Coulter). Submitted as Cockburn's thesis for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Film studies at York University, the film had its world premiere at the 42nd Toronto International Film Festival, and has been warmly received by critics. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? Tell the Catbot what you feel like watching and it picks from the whole catalogue, or browse by genre, country and year.

Lists: Korean thrillers worth the evening · Anime films beyond Studio Ghibli · Slow films for a rainy night · Horror that unsettles instead of startling · Series you can finish in a weekend · Nordic crime worth the subtitles · Good films that end in under 90 minutes · Documentaries that play like thrillers

Loading movies…

What should I watch?