The Swan

The Swan (2023) is Wes Anderson's Roald Dahl short film, available to watch online on iFILM. It runs seventeen minutes, and rather than acting the story out, the characters narrate it straight to camera at a breathless clip.

Two big, dim bullies with an air rifle pick their target: a small, bookish boy named Peter Watkins. What starts as cruel schoolyard sport escalates into something genuinely frightening along a riverbank. Rupert Friend narrates Dahl's prose almost word for word while the cast performs it against Anderson's trademark symmetrical sets, closer to staged theatre than conventional drama.

It belongs to a four-part Dahl anthology Anderson made for Netflix; paired with The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, the project finally landed him an Academy Award. Underneath the candy-bright styling sits a hard little tale about childhood cruelty and the way imagination can become a child's only escape. Stream The Swan (2023) online on iFILM.