Hello Dankness is a political fable that bears witness to the psychotropic spectacle of American politics from 2016 to 2021, and the mythologies and lore that took root around it. Taking form as a suburban stoner musical, the film follows a neighborhood through these years as consensus reality disintegrates into conspiracy and other contagions. What unfolds is a rogue retelling of history in which hotdogs debate the culture wars, trashcans preach QAnon, zombies rally for revolution, and real events are refashioned as Broadway bangers from Cats, Les Miserables, Annie, and The Phantom of the Opera. There are songs and dancing, moments of menace and melancholy, shitposting and deep sincerity. Created with Soda Jerk’s signature methodology, Hello Dankness is entirely composed of sampled media. Utilizing extensive rotoscoping and digital VFX, the feature length narrative has been grafted together from almost one thousand film, television and audio sources.
Begun in 2016 and labored on throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Hello Dankness is a record of the time, written from the time. Premiering at the Berlinale in 2023, it went on to win numerous cinema awards including Best Feature at the Atlanta Film Festival and Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival, as well as the Blackmagic Design Australian Innovation Award and the Berwick New Cinema Award. The Hollywood Reporter announced Hello Dankness as ”the most original and bizarrely elevating movie of the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival”, and the Guardian and Time Out published 4 and 5 star reviews. In New York, Hello Dankness played an extended theatrical run at Manhattan’s iconic Film Forum and was praised with reviews from the The New York Times and Brooklyn Rail.
The cast of characters include Tom Hanks, Annette Bening, Bruce Dern, Ice Cube, Wayne and Garth, Maya and Ana, Rue and Jules, Seth Rogen and Reyn Doi. American politicians play themselves, with Jesse Eisenberg in the role of Mark Zuckerberg, and The Phantom of the Opera as Vladimir Putin.