Zoetrope is a haunting and surreal film set in an apocalyptic, decaying world. Based on Franz Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony”, a man is imprisoned for an unnamed crime and tortured by a nameless sadistic bureaucrat. As the chilling nightmare unfolds, the prisoner peels away the layers of his own metaphysical existence, inching ever closer to his inescapable fate.
Direction
Deaux channels Lynch and Cronenberg in a student film budget.
Practical Effects
Gross, tactile machinery that feels genuinely ancient and wrong.
Sound
Industrial scraping that crawls under your skin permanently.
Director
Charlie Deaux
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Kafka's original story was written in 1914 but unpublished until 1919—Deaux's film arrived exactly 80 years later, as Y2K paranoia mirrored Kafka's bureaucratic anxieties.
The 'zoetrope' device in the title refers to an early animation mechanism—fitting for a film about cyclical, inescapable motion toward doom.
US
