A woman swaps bodies with a chair, and everyone likes her better as a chair.

Writer-director Amanda Kramer brilliantly collages tropes of literature, cinema, and performance art to cleverly take the piss out of common social scripts people use to convince themselves that they have full lives of purpose when they do not.

Fashioned as an epic fable featuring diminutive characters, By Design recounts the story of Camille (exceptionally played by Juliette Lewis), a woman sustained by friendships with women who use her to talk about themselves. When Camille falls in love with a chair she can’t afford, she becomes the chair, which gets gifted to a beautiful piano player-for-hire, Olivier (Mamoudou Athie), by his ex.

Camille and Olivier are intriguing people with rich interior character landscapes. But in a society that refuses to acknowledge their existence, is it better to be a chair?—Shari Frilot

Available in person. Also available online for the public (January 30–February 2) and credentialed press and industry (January 29–February 2).