Where Knights Fall

Name: Where Knights Fall
Duration: 3 min 35 s

Matteo Sangalli20263 min

Format: Short film
Year: 2026

Synopsis

In a tower at the edge of a far away kingdom, Rapunzel waits. At the foot of the tower the ground is thick with the bodies of knights, princesses and princes, all those who came before and tried and fell. It is the old rescue fantasy, but seen from the bottom of the tower, where the rescuers have piled up.

Then a new suitor arrives, and he does not climb. He crawls and slides. The film plays that change of method as its joke, a comic take on the fairy tale in which the long line of failed heroes sets up the gag and the latest arrival breaks the pattern.

Curious Refuge describes the woman in the tower as someone who measures her imprisonment by how much her hair grows, about six inches a year, and who is waiting for her own freedom rather than for a prince to rescue her. It calls the film earnest in its grief and darkly funny in its resolution, with a medieval look that turns the rescue fantasy upside down: she is trapped above and the men have fallen below. Reviewers who saw it with an audience called it a spoof, with a belly-sliding prince.

Last Updated 12 October 2026

About the Show

Where Knights Fall is a comedy-fantasy short film of about three and a half minutes (215 seconds on Vimeo), made by Mathery, the Italian duo Matteo Sangalli and Erika Zorzi. It was uploaded to the duo's Vimeo channel on 27 March 2026, which is where it can be watched. Shortverse lists it as a comedy fantasy of four minutes from Italy, made by Mathery Studio in English, and gives a different release date, 14 May 2026. Vimeo labels the film as including AI.

The pages do not name the models or tools used. Vimeo's AI label and Mathery's own project page, which titles the film "Where knights fall AI", show that AI played a part, and Shortverse lists the technique as AI, but none of them says which parts were generated or what was done by hand. The one credit besides the directors is sound design and audio postproduction by xonexstudio.

Sangalli and Zorzi are an artist duo working in film direction, photography and exhibition design. Both were born in Italy, studied at NABA in Milan and now live in Brooklyn, and they are represented internationally by 1stAveMachine, according to Wikipedia. Their commercial work covers clients such as Google, Nestle, Target, Jaguar, Ikea and KFC, and they wrote and directed the opening film for the OFFF festival in Barcelona in 2018. Their record includes an earlier AI short, A Feather and a Prayer, from 2025.

The film won Silver in the Film category of Runway's AI Festival 2026, the fourth annual edition, behind the Grand Prix winner A Face Only A Mother Could Love and Gold winner The Well. Runway's site lists the Silver award as $10,000 in cash and 500,000 Runway credits, and the festival held gala screenings in New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo that summer. Mathery's site also lists it as an official selection at GIFF.

Reviewers who attended the festival's screening wrote about it. A Yahoo article on the festival said they loved it and called it a spoof of Rapunzel with a belly-sliding prince. Fast Company Mexico called it the funniest film of the festival and the author's personal pick, though one of the less impressive on looks, comparing it to a decaffeinated Shrek and concluding that it is better to be funny but ugly than beautiful but boring. It was the last short shown that night, which the author suggested may explain its popularity.