Film

Trend

Name: Trend
Genre: Comedy
Released: 2023
Cast: Dino Bajrović, Lidija Kordić, Adnan Krešo, Damir Kustura, Saša Peševski

Absurdist comedy
Light-hearted

Trend is a seventeen-minute Bosnian comedy about two brothers inheriting a nightclub and promptly running it into the ground in spectacularly different ways. It's a tight, absurdist sketch with the rhythm of a joke that knows exactly when to land. Darkly funny, visually inventive, and made with the kind of precision that makes short films sing.

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like short, deadpan comedy where small-time ambition is handled with a straight face and the absurdity grows out of ordinary details.

Skip it if you want a plot that escalates steadily, since this is a slight sketch built on mood and recurring jokes rather than a full story.

What it asks of you: Seventeen minutes at a flat, unhurried clip, with little setup and no rush to explain itself; the attention is brief but the rhythm stays deliberately dry.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Four Rooms1995

One night, one hotel, cascading chaos as a bellhop tries to satisfy increasingly impossible demands from guests. Like Trend, it's about small spaces spiralling into anarchic comedy through the collision of incompetent people with ridiculous stakes.

But The humour is very '90s and hits unevenly; some sketches soar while others lag. It's also longer and looser than you might want.

In Good Company2004

Two men try to run a tiny Sarajevo newspaper while the city tears itself apart around them. Finds dark comedy in the absurdity of maintaining normalcy when everything is collapsing—same DNA as Trend, just stretched across feature length.

But It's more melancholic than laugh-out-loud funny. The mood is bitingly ironic rather than silly.

I, Daniel Blake2016

A man navigates bureaucratic systems designed to humiliate him. The comedy comes from the grotesque logic of the machinery itself—absurdist in its own way, finding dark humour in watching systems break people.

But It's a Ken Loach film, so it's angry and serious. This isn't a night out; it's a reckoning.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Trend

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Guard2011

Both find comedy in the gap between people's self-image and reality; both love dialect and register-shifting; both make working-class characters intelligent and funny rather than buffoonish.

An Irish policeman and an FBI agent form an unlikely partnership to solve a crime. Brendan Gleeson is magnificent—rough, kind, and obscene in the same breath. It has Trend's dark comedy about marginal people making life difficult for themselves, but through character and dialogue rather than absurdist structure. A film about the small indignities of being working-class funny.

But The crime plot is fairly thin and takes a back seat to chat and character. If you need plot, it feels meandering.

After Hours1985

A man's evening in downtown Manhattan becomes a fever dream of escalating weirdness. Precisely structured chaos where every scene makes terrible sense—Scorsese doing absurdist comedy before most people knew it was possible.

But It's from 1985 and the tone is unsettling in ways that can feel meanspirited. Some of it has aged poorly.

Withnail & I1987

Two unemployed actors stumble through a disastrous holiday. A masterclass in comic timing and character-based humour—the kind of film where everything is quotable and the tragedy of small ambitions becomes genuinely funny.

But It's British, literary, and requires you to like your protagonists to be failures. If you need plot momentum, look elsewhere.

The Death of Stalin2017

Soviet power brokers jostle for control while a dictator lies dead. Pitch-black political comedy that moves like a stage farce, with the same ruthless logic where incompetence and ego drive everything toward disaster.

But It's a period piece about 1950s USSR and requires some baseline knowledge. The humour is very dry and intellectual.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople2016

An old man and a foster kid run into the New Zealand bush together. Taika Waititi finds comedy in the warmth between misfits, with the same deadpan precision and character comedy that makes absurdity feel earned rather than forced.

But It's a road movie that takes its time. If you want quick laughs, it meanders.

A Serious Man2009

A man's life methodically falls apart in ways both ridiculous and tragic. The Coen Brothers' most absurdist film—structured like a cosmic joke where competence means nothing and the universe is rigged toward comedy.

But It's deliberately frustrating and offers no catharsis. Some viewers find it bleak rather than funny.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil2010

Two harmless hillbillies are mistaken for killers by a group of college kids, leading to a comedy of misunderstanding. Genre comedy with the same energy of incompetent people trapped in an escalating situation.

But It relies on horror-comedy tone shifts that don't always land. It's also somewhat slight—fun but forgettable.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives2010

Both films trust that comedy lives in the space between what people say and what they mean; both are structurally patient; both find the surreal inside the everyday, not outside it.

An old man in rural Thailand sits with his family as ghosts visit. Apichatpong Weerasethakul's film is anti-narrative comedy—nothing happens in the conventional sense, but the comedy comes from the quiet absurdity of accepting the impossible. It's Trend's brevity and patience stretched across two hours, asking you to find humour in the shape of a conversation.

But This is not a comedy in any conventional sense. Nothing explodes, nobody yells, nobody learns anything. It demands a very different kind of attention and will feel like nothing to anyone not primed for it.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives poster

Ghostland2018

Both understand that comedy and tragedy are structural siblings; both are built on a single central misunderstanding that, once revealed, makes you want to rewatch immediately; both are about how we construct meaning from what we're shown.

A horror film about two sisters that gradually becomes something else entirely. Pascal Laugier's twist isn't gimmicky—it recontextualizes everything that came before. Like Trend, it's a film that understands that the most devastating comedy comes from the gap between how things appear and what they actually are.

But The first half is genuinely brutal and disturbing, including sexual violence. The twist will either devastate you or infuriate you depending on your tolerance for meta-textual games.