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Summary
Please Holdis a 2020 short picture that mix the material unfairness prisoners in America face with the almost surreal experience of trying to navigate New bon ton ’s technological " advances " . Mexican American filmmaker K.D. Dávila made her directorial debut withPlease Holdafter pass the first part of her vocation as a writer , work on the 2017 movieThe Labyrinthand write 13 episodes ofSalvation . Many major movie director have made short filmsand if the success ofPlease Holdmeans anything , Dávila will in all probability have a feature film film of her own soon .
The film was nominated for Best Live Action Short Film at the 94th Academy Awardsin 2022 but lost toThe Long Goodbyeby Aneil Karia and Riz Ahmed . Please Holdtakes place in the approximate hereafter where drones and automated service have been put in charge of law enforcement . Mateo ( Erick Lopez ) is on his way to work when he ’s wrongfully hold . In his nurse cell , Mateo is forced to deal out with an automated court system à la " Clippy " from Microsoft , and finds himself falling deeper into debt and a phantasmagorical nightmare when he ca n’t reach a homo .
Denis Villeneuve ’s light film Next Floor is a comic , grotesque , and intellection - provoking celluloid that has a mess to say about humanity and using up .

What Happens In The Please Hold Ending & Its Kafka Influence
Mateo Is Trapped In An Unending And Surreal Nightmare
At the final stage ofPlease Hold , Mateo has finally managed to get the money to hire an existent human lawyer , instead of the automated public defender whose voice recognition software is n’t working well and who cheerfully suggests Mateo plead guilty to a criminal offense he is still incognizant of . His human lawyer bet at his note for only a span of seconds before see there ’s been a clerical error and Mateo is now position free . However , asMateo walk out to freedom after week in jail , he listens to voice mail saying he ’s been fired , evict , and more .
alternatively , he ’s the dupe of an uncaring , disinterested , and bureaucratic artificial intelligence that human beings have on the face of it happily follow through .
The idea of the picture came in full formed to Dávila , who had heard a report about a Hispanic military man who was wrongfully imprisoned for weeks , and by the fourth dimension he was released , he had lost his car and his chore . Dávila toldIndieWire ,

" That tale really stuck with me . This idea came pretty fully formed of , ' What if we took that and combined it with the universal experience of being stuck on the headphone with customer military service ? ' Like an automatise phone tree where you ’re in a Kafka - esque Scheol . "
Please Holdis the type ofdystopian sci - fi picture Franz Kafka would approve of . There are no malign force at work targeting Mateo . rather , he ’s the victim of an uncaring , disinterested , and bureaucratic unreal intelligence that humans have ostensibly gayly implemented . He did n’t do anything wrong ; his imprisonment and the catch-22 of having to pay his manner out of a prison house system that ’s also drain him of money is very much in stemma with the nightmarish and oppressive stories Kafka make . The conclusion set an ecphonesis point on this thought because , even though Mateo escapes , his life is unfairly altered .
Please HoldCast

player
Character
Erick Lopez

Custom Image by Zach Moser
Mateo
Doreen Calderon
Mamá Torres

Daniel Mora
Papá Torres
Ruben Dávila
Guillermo Lima
John Alton
Ben Saperstein
Greg Karber
Automated Public Defender ( Voice )
Dan Messerschmidt
Correcticorp AI ( Voice )
The Real Meaning Of The Please Hold Ending
Please Hold Shows A Future That’s The Reality Of Many People Today
Dávila toldIndieWireabout her experiences with law enforcement and the Latino community ,
" Right now , in - person visitation at prisons is something that a lot of prisons have been endeavor to phase out by pose in essentially Zoom that they charge tons of money for . And that encumbrance goes to families . I ’m Mexican - American . The Latino community is my community and our multitude are over - incarcerated , especially in the Los Angeles area . It was of import to us that we show that it ’s not just this one bozo ’s life that ’s being deflower . It has a ripple burden throughout his stallion . … His family is bearing the burden of this mistake . And that ’s real . "
Please Holdis a speed go through what many fairly and wrongfully convicted people go throughin the United States . or else of help , an uncaring automated motor lodge system aid desk only create Mateo ’s troth more helpless . He ca n’t even speak to a human to explain that he ’s been wrongfully convict . The moment a human finally help oneself him , he ’s immediately exonerated . Of naturally , by then , his and his parent ' lives have been involve , possibly even ruined .