‘CAGE’ Turns Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Authoritarianism Into A Nightmarish Ritual

In the haunting, one-minute short CAGE, U.S.-born Russian immigrant filmmaker Nikita Kibirev distills the creeping dread of America’s authoritarian slide into a looping nightmare. Written, directed, designed, animated, and composited entirely solo, with an original score by Peter John, the film summons authoritarianism as a dark, ritual-born entity, fed by the scapegoating of immigrants.

“I made this piece to process the surreal dread of watching the country slide deeper into authoritarianism during Trump’s second term,” says Kibirev of his inspiration.

CAGE blends political horror with the uncanny. In its looping nightmare, immigrants are corralled by jackbooted ICE stormtroopers while MAGA officials clap in eerie unison. Overhead looms a grotesque crowned eagle. At moments, escape into a golden mirage seems possible, a pristine, nostalgic vision of Trump’s “Great” America. A baseball becomes the symbolic centerpiece of this illusion, transforming from a fatherly gesture into an object of visceral, Lovecraftian horror.

“The ‘cage’ is both physical and psychological,” Kibirev explains further. “In the Soviet gulag, one of the ways to break a person’s spirit was to force them to do something meaningless every day — like digging a hole for hours, only to fill it back in before nightfall. It’s deeply painful to feel helpless, to know your actions have no impact. That kind of emptiness breaks a person. Being trapped in a loop — one that feels almost Lovecraftian — creates the same kind of hopelessness.”

CAGE renders hopelessness as both physical confinement and psychological erosion. Its looping structure and monstrous, tentacled “state” imagery make it as much Lovecraft as it is a political warning.