Some kills aren't so routine.
SXSW — World Premiere
Show Me Shorts — New Zealand
Lower East Side FF
Mammoth Lakes FF
FilmQuest — Best Comedy Short
SPASM — Canada
Feratum Film Fest — Mexico
Not Film Festival — Italy
Macau ISFF — China
Aspen Shortsfest
Raindance — UK
HollyShorts
Hawai'i IFF
REGARD — Canada
Fantaspoa — Brazil
SXSW London — UK
Bengaluru ISFF — India
Calgary IFF — Canada
FunCinema Mar del Plata — Argentina
Filmoramax — France
Bolton Film Festival — UK
Santiago Horror FF — Chile
Tehran IFF — Iran
TOHorror Film Fest — Italy
PÖFF Shorts — Estonia
Bilbao Zinebi — Spain
Whistler FF — Canada
London Short Film Festival — UK
Kurzfilmwoche Regensburg — Germany
Landshut Kurzfilmfestival — Germany
Clermont-Ferrand — Short Film Market Pick
Minneapolis St. Paul IFF
RiverRun IFF
Filmfest DC
Milwaukee IFF
Chicago Critics Fest
Lighthouse IFF
Nevada City FF
Palm Springs ShortFest
Indy Shorts — Heartland
Footcandle Film Festival
El Paso Film Festival
Desmond District Demons
Maryland Film Festival
Fargo FF — Honorable Mention
Poppy Jasper IFF
Kaş ISFF — Turkey
Horror-on-Sea — UK
Montclair Film Festival — Winner, Fiction ShortsSnake Alley — Winner, Best Comedy & Best PerformanceCambria Film Festival — Winner, Best Short Film
A cheeky dismantling of spy tropes and a love letter to Cambodia, THE SENTRY follows a Western agent who thinks he's about to make another routine kill—until a local guard refuses to remain a footnote.
A genre-bending tale about the extraordinary lives we're trained to overlook.
From the director of Buddhist sci-fi feature Karmalink (Venice Critics' Week), THE SENTRY blends 70s nostalgia, action-comedy, and a sharp jab at neocolonial narratives.
It's a rare filmmaker who can make a short film feel as rich and resonant as a full-length feature. But Wachtel does just that, thanks to his meticulous craftsmanship and ethical imagination.
An elegant deconstruction of the spy genre that brings both flair and depth, The Sentry proves that even a short film can carry global weight and local soul.
The Sentry flips the action genre on its head, presenting viewers with a film that blends a series of genres, begs viewers to ask important questions, and eventually becomes fully immersed in a world that is both wildly different and eerily similar to ours.
Mixed with the usual karate-style knock-'em sock-em scene comes a comedy short with a serious theme buried beneath the laughs.
"Please make this a feature, please"
"Genre bending of the very best kind. Brilliantly written, acted and set against the jaw-dropping landscape of Cambodia."
"Surprising, silly, fun, and a bit heartbreaking."
"So great! Saw this at SXSW. Beautiful scenery of Cambodia, a memorable story I'm thinking about days later."
"This is the funnest short I've ever seen! Genre-mashup joy, a love letter to Cambodia and heart brimming with creativity."
"Perfect concept with fantastic execution and a really great heart to it… one that will be remembered."
"Morphs from action thriller to buddy comedy to tenderhearted drama in the most satisfying way."
"One of my fav shorts from this year."
Photography by Karl Erik Brøndbo
Jake Wachtel moved to Cambodia in 2014 to teach filmmaking to kids. Near the end of that year he was reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and couldn’t stop picturing it set in his students’ neighborhood. Six years later that daydream was Karmalink, a Buddhist sci-fi adventure starring kids from his class. It opened Venice Critics’ Week in 2021, and Variety called it a “magical spiritual mystery tour.”
Cambodia became his home base for the next decade, long enough to fall for grilled fermented fish paste and to find American bathrooms, with their lack of bum guns, a little savage. His films take stories from places Hollywood treats as backdrop and run them through the genres he loves: Karmalink through The Goonies, The Sentry through Roger Moore–era Bond. Underneath, he’s poking at thornier stuff: development, who it really serves, and what it means to be a Westerner making films in Cambodia at all, while celebrating a place and people he adores.
Jake loves spy movies but has always found all that anonymous death a little corrosive to the soul. So The Sentry gives the henchman his story, and finds common cause between him and the garment worker who sewed your shirt. Nearly everyone who made it was Cambodian, from the film’s star, Phang Dara, to the art, production, stunt, and camera crews.
In Development
THE SENTRY is being developed into a feature film — a metaphysical road trip, odd-couple comedy, with a dash of spy swagger. For inquiries about the project, get in touch.
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