PATROL

There’s a moment in "Patrol" when Stine, our once-steadfast rookie cop, is left staring at the consequences of her own actions—an injured suspect, a moral boundary crossed, and the quiet, creeping realization that she is not the person she thought she was. No dramatic music swells, no grand revelation is spoken aloud. Instead, there is just silence, and in that silence, "Patrol" delivers one of the most chilling, brutally honest dissections of power and corruption in recent memory. 

Asger Sisseck doesn’t waste time with hand-holding or moral grandstanding. "Patrol" is not a film about “bad cops” or “good cops” in the way that so many lesser works attempt to frame the conversation. Instead, it operates in a world where justice is an idea constantly slipping through the cracks, where doing the right thing is an exhausting, often impossible task. Stine enters this world believing that integrity is enough—that if she stands up, speaks out, and refuses to play by the unwritten rules, she will emerge on the right side of history. But the key brilliance of this short is how it methodically dismantles that belief, not with melodrama, but with cold, inescapable reality. 

The structure of the film is deceptively simple: Stine, having testified against her previous mentor, is now paired with Sami, a veteran cop who long ago accepted the moral grey areas of the job. What follows is a nightmarish descent into the compromises that define modern law enforcement. It’s in the small details—the knowing glances, the resigned sighs, the way conversations are cut short before any real self-reflection can occur—that the film’s brilliance shines. 

Take the moment when Stine and Sami respond to a party disturbance and stumble upon a scene of unimaginable horror—a teenage girl, unconscious, likely assaulted, her body reacting violently to an overdose. It’s the kind of moment that should be a breaking point, a clear-cut instance of right and wrong, justice and injustice. And yet, even here, the system fumbles, the bureaucracy wins. This is where "Patrol" hits hardest: not in the spectacle of violence, but in the quiet devastation of realizing that justice is not inevitable. 

The final act is where the film cements its place as something truly exceptional. Stine, desperate for a resolution, finally lets her emotions take control. The confrontation that follows is a masterclass in tension—not because we expect a shootout or a sudden act of brutality, but because we understand, with sinking dread, that we are about to watch someone cross a line they never thought they’d even approach. The brilliance of this moment is in its inevitability. We don’t watch Stine “break bad”; we watch her succumb to the crushing weight of a world that offers no good choices.

And then, the ultimate question—does she salvage her career, justify her actions, and fully step into the moral ambiguity she once rejected? The film, wisely, refuses to answer. Because the answer is not the point. The point is that the choice exists at all, that the system has been so thoroughly poisoned that a person like Stine can reach this precipice and not know which way to fall. 

"Patrol" is a masterwork of restraint, a film that understands that the loudest truths are often found in the quietest moments. It is, without question, one of the most unsettling and essential short films of its kind—a film that doesn’t just ask difficult questions, but forces us to sit in the discomfort of knowing that no easy answers exist.