Let Them Eat Cake

“Jeff Bezos” runs a local pastry shop, doing everything to please increasingly picky and demanding customers. In the kitchen, tiny characters made of cake are exploited to produce the food, like in some kind of demented version of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. In his eternal quest for the best, “Jeff Bezos” will find the ultimate cake recipe, with some sacrifices to make.

Director Bjerre cooks a biting animated criticism of capitalism as “creative destruction”, as insatiable desires leading to unequal distribution of resources. The glazed and shiny surfaces, the low-angle shots and the manic behaviour of characters whose complexion looks like baked dough – it all powerfully evokes a world of alienation under the saccharose taste. Bjerre’s work deals with “pop-culture clashing with anti-capitalistic sentiments in anarchistic animation” – a creed which is epitomised by Zero Sum G, a collection of 30 shorts he’s been making since 2022, which are available on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok and have reached over 100 000 followers.