Sam starts working at Spoetnik, a clandestine chips stand named after its specialty. Right across the street is a brothel with an alluring girl who evidently needs Sam’s help. A slightly surreal tale of love at first sight, Noël Loozen’s Spoetnik doesn’t do anything revolutionary in terms of storytelling (it’s pretty much a case of boy meets girl, boys falls for girl, boy has to overcome obstacles to win girl’s heart), but it’s the filmmaking approach that really catches the eye here. Characters, costume and location all feel perfectly picked and it’s obvious the director and his team put a lot of time and thought into creating their on-screen world. A semi-autobiographical tale with the director’s brother in the lead role, Spoetnik premiered at Berlinale in 2016 and won the award for Best European Fiction Short at the Go Short Festival in the same year.
