Anino is a 2000 short film (12 minutes) from the Philippines, directed by Raymond Red.
The main character is a photographer. He lingers in a church in Manila, hoping to get people to pay for pictures, but no one is—he hasn't eaten since yesterday. The photographer plods out of the church only to meet a man dressed in black, leaning against the door, who out of nowhere starts yelling at him for being an idiot and a loser. The man spends the day wandering around Manila, losing his camera through his own stupidity.
The scenes with the photographer are intercut with scenes of a second man, behind the wheel of a car, stuck in traffic and increasingly frustrated. Finally the driver gets out of the traffic jam and turns into an alley, only to encounter the photographer.
Tropes:
- Barefoot Poverty: Taken to the extreme with a naked child, sitting outside in the slums.
- Call-Back: The final scene shows that the Street Urchin at least wasn't lying about knowing how to use the camera. Instead of selling it like one might suppose, he's snapping pictures.
- Crapsack World: The slums of Manila, with naked children wandering about, people starving (the photographer hasn't eaten in a day), shanty towns, garbage everywhere, human feces floating by in the street.
- Dutch Angle: The shot of the photographer from the driver's POV is tilted, signaling the tension of the confrontation to come.
- Gainax Ending: It seems as if the photographer has been arrested for assaulting the driver—he's grabbed by two people and thrown into a car. Instead, he wakes up in the back seat only to find that he's being driven by the mysterious man in black, who may not even be real, with the second man who grabbed him nowhere to be seen. Just to make it weirder, the photographer asks "Am I going home?", and the man in black answers "Yes." The End. Who is the man in black and why is he driving the photographer around? Is he The Grim Reaper, and the photographer has died?
- Hope Spot: The driver comes bounding out of his car yelling insults. He smacks the photographer and then pulls a gun. The photographer, showing lightning-fast reflexes, pulls the gun right out of the driver's hand, and then slaps him for good measure. It seems as if at least the photographer has reclaimed some dignity. But no, instead two people, possibly cops, jump out and beat the photographer up a little before chucking him in the back of a car.
- Idiot Ball: The man's sole possession is his camera. He's sitting around in a park when a Street Urchin walks up, looking interested. The photographer hands over the camera and suggests the urchin take his picture. He walks a few steps away to pose, turns around, and naturally finds the Street Urchin long gone.
- Nameless Narrative: The main characters are credited as "Photographer", "Man with the gun" (the driver), and "Man in black".
- Person with the Clothing: The man who insults the photographer and then picks him up at the end is listed in the credits as "Man in black."
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: For no obvious reason, the man in black insults the photographer, starting off by noting that the photographer prays all the time but nothing happens, then pointing out that the photographer is so poor that he hasn't eaten since the day before, then ranting about how the photographer is a "thief" and a "user" for taking people's pictures in church and hoping to get paid for them.
- Street Urchin: A shirtless boy approaches the photographer in the park. The man stupidly lets the boy handle his camera, then turns his back, only to turn back around to see that both boy and camera have disappeared.
- Talking to Themself: The photographer leaves a church, only to be mercilessly insulted by a man in black leaning against the doorway. The photographer turns to leave, then turns around to find that the man in black has disappeared. Was he the photographer's hallucination? Or is he a ghost? Or The Grim Reaper?
