The SXSW Film Festival is a hotbed for the best in indie film, offbeat stories, and counter culture cinema. There are tons of feature length films that get lots of attention, but there's also a great variety of short films that are equally fantastic (if not better) than some of those movies. Case and point: Sequin Raze directed and written by Sarah Gertrude Shapiro. The 20-minute short stars one of my personal faves Anna Camp (of Pitch Perfect and True Blood fame) as Jessica, a disgruntled runner-up of a Bachelor-esque reality show. Show producer Rebecca Goldberg (Ashley Williams from How I Met Your Mother and Something Borrowed) plays up Jessica's dormant fury in an attempt to get an epic meltdown for her on-camera exit interview. The result is a great dark comedy of manipulation and a battle of wits between the two females.

Sequin Raze is a clever and subtle skewering of what goes on behind the scenes of reality shows that we love to eat up on a daily basis. Let's just hope that this short film gets the play it deserves — and possibly a full-length feature. Check out the trailer:

SEQUIN RAZE - SXSW World Premiere Trailer - Trailer edited by Nicholas Davis from Sarah Gertrude Shapiro on Vimeo.