Fort Buchanan

Director: Benjamin Crotty

2015 / 64min / DCP

With his husband deployed overseas on a mission in Djibouti, Roger (Andy Gillet) stays back to guard the homefront—that is, the remote French military base of the title—taking care of their rambunctious adopted daughter, Roxy, while fending off horny army wives. Crotty, expanding on a 2012 short of the same title, delivers a sly, carnal comic melodrama of synthetic emotions, slapstick laffs, and sylvan naturalistic splendors shot on coarse-grained celluloid, with dialogue poached from American trash TV, then translated into subtitled French. “[A] unique cinematic vision, combining animated flights of fancy with 16mm realism, that continually dislodges viewer expectation.”—Film Comment