Market Screening: André Is An Idiot

Unexpected, irreverent, and defiantly heartfelt, André Is An Idiot is a wildly life-affirming film about death and about the strange clarity that arrives when time suddenly becomes finite. When André Ricciardi, a self-proclaimed “idiot” for skipping the colonoscopy that could have saved him, learns he is dying, he turns his final chapter into an experiment in radical honesty, humor, and curiosity. A lifelong iconoclast and ad-industry provocateur, André has never done anything the conventional way, and confronting mortality proves no different: he picks up a camera, cracks a joke, and begins to ask the biggest questions of his life with disarming candor.

In a deeply collaborative partnership with director Tony Benna, André’s inner world — his stories, fears, philosophies, and absurdist imagination — is brought to life through fantastical stop-motion animation woven into vérité footage. These animated interludes illuminate the way André processes both joy and dread, transforming the film into a playful yet profound portrait of a man determined to face death as openly and ridiculously as he has lived.