Bent
Director: Sam B. Jones
United States, 2026, 17 min
Shooting Format:4K
Festival Year:2026
Category:Documentary Short
Genres:Verite, Documentary, Sports, Coming of Age, Observational
Crew:Producers: Simon Mendes, Sam B. Jones. DP: Sam B. Jones
Email:samjoneswho@gmail.com
Synopsis
A twelve-year-old boy from a family of demolition derby drivers tries to prove himself by competing in his first derby, but finds the validation he’s seeking is elusive.
Trailer
About the director
Sam B. Jones is a director and cinematographer working across narrative, documentary, and experimental formats to explore the formation and myriad expressions of American identity and masculinity. His debut feature RED, WHITE & WASTED (Tribeca 2019) is an observational documentary that follows a Florida family obsessed with the off-road truck subculture of "mudding” as they grapple with the potential ending of their way of life.
Sam has over a decade of experience directing music videos and short films for artists such as Josh Kline, Yung Jake, Zain Alam, Mimi Bai, DonChristian, and Kalifa (f.k.a. Le1f), and has lensed multiple narrative and documentary features as a DP. His work has screened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Boston Center for the Arts, and numerous festivals including Tribeca, Big Sky, New Orleans, Maryland, Cucalorus, and Rooftop Films. Sam grew up in Seattle, studied film at Wesleyan University, and now lives in Queens, NY.
Filmmaker's note
It was by chance that I got connected to the Snyder family: three generations of demolition derby drivers in rural New York state. I met someone who had grown up with them, and when she learned I was interested in American subcultures but had never been to a demolition derby, she put me in touch.
The Snyders invited me to come check out a derby, and I didn’t know what I would film or find there, but one family member in particular caught my attention: Bentlee. He was twelve years old, shy and rail-thin, but he didn’t play with the other kids - he hung around his older brother and his uncles, working on cars, and announced with surprising confidence that he was ready to run his first derby. A ‘first derby’ seemed to me like a deeply American coming-of-age ritual. I had to film it.
Capturing Bentlee at the moment where he chooses to undergo this challenge felt laden with meaning, both for him as a person and as a microcosm of male adolescence. Intentionally smashing up your car to prove yourself to your peers seems to me like a perfect metaphor for the formation of masculinity - and a novel way to observe and reflect on the real, messy, and incomplete process of a boy attempting to be a man.