P for Pelican
- measured
- gentle
- inventive
- intimate
Neutral, measured, gentle documentary / short, inventive in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.
How every film is hand-scored →An old hermit lives in a slum and wants to teach the alphabet to the children who regularly go there to play. When a child proposes he use the word “Pelican” for the letter ‘P’, the hermit goes to the nearby park to see this animal he has never heard of.
Our read · P for Pelican (1972) reads as a neutral, measured, inventive documentary · short · iranian entry — gentle in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook, with a strong directorial signature. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.
More info & search links
The shape of P for Pelican
What watching it is actually like.
“You want a short poetic Iranian film about an old hermit teaching the alphabet.”
Skip it tonight — Skip if you need conventional narrative or dislike slow artistic shorts.
The reading.
Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.
Eight films that read most like this one.
Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”
Discussion
What does your Movie DNA look like?
Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.
Calibrate yourself