REVIEW: BULLDOZER (SHORT) ★★★★★
BULLDOZER (native title ‘TONSER’) is written and directed by Danish actor (GANGS OF LONDON), director, screenwriter and comedian Mads Koudal. The film released in 2022 had a very successful run in the festival circuit earning a slew of wins and nominations including nominations at Oscar-qualifying Danish short film festival OFF – Odense Film Festival, Palm Springs International ShortFest, Nordisk Panorama and Brussels Short Film Festival. When you watch the film, you will understand what all the fuzz is about.
Even though many filmmakers begin their career by making short films it’s not an easy genre to master – keep it simple – a mindset many forgets, but something Mads Koudal has embraced full on and nearly perfected to a tee. BULLDOZER (14 min.) has a very simple – but important – storyline and let its story unfold in just two main locations.
The film is about three 15-year-old teenagers who meet an autistic man at a pier, a meeting that begins quite innocent but soon escalates towards the choking and surprising end. AGNES (Flora Ofelia Hofmann Lindahl) is the alpha female and leads her sidekicks SIMON (Bertram Bisgaard) and CLARA (Selma Puntervold) which is established early in the movie when they roam a local supermarket, and Agnes wants to steal energy drinks. Agnes – all dressed up in street clothes with cheeky ominous cornrows hanging from her head - pressure them all to follow through on their mission which ends abruptly when they are caught, and they set sail towards the pier.
While catching their breath they quickly spot an autistic man (Mikkel Vadsholt) and Agnes soon finds the will to engage in new shenanigans. Mads Koudal cleverly taps into the menace of modern society which is the all-encompassing ability and desire amongst youngsters to film everything and everyone on their path and put it on social media without much care for the quote-unquote “victims” of the situation.
Agnes slowly experiences an uprising against her from her loyal tribe-members as she engages in a transgressive and sadistic game that involves the autistic man playing fetch and humiliating him by filming it all on her mobile phone. As tension among the group of three escalates and the autistic man becomes more and more invested in the game and his new-found “friends” Simon finally chooses to intervene with devastating consequences.
Mads Koudal succeeds in keeping it simple by using only a few actors, few main locations and a simple but engaging story that packs a punch when the unsettling end is being revealed.
