Erick Lopez

Doreen Calderon

Daniel Edward Mora

Ruben Dávila

John Alton

Greg Karber

Dani Messerschmidt

Brian Paison

Shaun S. Sutton

Devon Dávila

Rubina Dávila

Nadia Trinidad

Diego Najera

Rom Lotan

Omer Levin Menekse

Marc A. Mounier

David McDonnell

Selena Webb

Basil Schneeberger

Brian Curiel

Amanda Lenker Doyle

Dave Wilwayco

Nedim Menekse

Grant MacAllister

Jonathan Romeo

Enrico Targetti

David Boman

Astrid Mounier

James Salini

Alexah Acuña

Shachar Boussani

Michael Glasner

Aytana Ramirez

Ragini Bhasin

Andrew Wood

Nick Paroz

Michelle Akeley

Michel Mounier

Sean Hood

Whitney Odman

Francisco Martin Del Campo

Ryan K. McNeal

Tamara Marie Watson

Rich Robles

Chrissy Fiorilli

Farhad Ahmed Dehlvi

K.D. Dávila

Science Fiction

Comedy

Please Hold

Scavenger Entertainment

United States of America

CinemaSerf

The young “Mateo” (Erick Lopez) is heading to work one morning when he is apprehended by an automated policeman, forced to put on hand-cuffs and incarcerated - all without seeing or speaking to an human being. In his cell, the big screen advises him to plead guilty or face 45 years in jail, but he still hasn’t the faintest idea what he’s supposed to have done. With no money, he has to take a prison job to try to earn enough to place a call to his folks to try and get their help to raise enough cash for a perfunctory chat - but that just proves to be with an uninterested attorney who just wants his fee. Is there any chance he is ever going to even get to court let alone attain his freedom, and even if he does - what could possibly await him on the outside? At a time when there is talk of removing juries from some trials in the UK, this offers quite an unnervingly plausible look at just how that process of gradual erosion might actually turn out as automation becomes easier, cheaper, and cleaner - especially when visited upon those with limited resources to combat this quite scary pay-as-you-go culture. Lopez delivers quite well as the hapless fellow increasingly frustrated at every turn, and the relentlessly presented, jargon-laced, text messaging serves to effectively, and sometimes quite comically, dehumanise the processes of not just justice, but of humanity itself. Worth twenty minutes, and I’d be surprised if it doesn’t resonate on some level with all of our day-to-day lives just a little.

English

FFF 2021 - Trailer - Please Hold