Film Review: Eructation

Director Victoria Trow turns one woman’s quest to produce the world’s loudest female burp into a brisk, beautifully composed documentary about ambition, confidence and the glorious absurdity of being very, very good at something strange.

There are documentaries built around war, politics, injustice and sweeping historical events. And then there is Eructation, Victoria Trow’s wonderfully straight-faced six-minute portrait of Kaylee Kotkins, a Portland nurse pursuing a decidedly less conventional form of greatness: breaking the world record for the loudest female burp. The existing mark stands at 107.3 decibels; Kotkins has reportedly reached 110 in practice. What might have been little more than a one-joke internet video instead becomes an oddly persuasive miniature about the seriousness with which human beings pursue the things that make them singular.

That distinction is largely owed to Trow, making her filmmaking debut after roughly 15 years working as a creative director in advertising. She approaches the material without either mocking Kotkins or pretending that the endeavor is more profound than it is. The joke is obvious — this is, after all, a movie building toward a monumental belch — but Trow understands that the film becomes funnier when everybody involved treats the mission with the solemnity of an Olympic qualifying event.

Kotkins proves to be precisely the subject the concept requires. She doesn't present herself as a novelty act. She experiments. She trains. She studies the mechanics of her body. She records her findings in what the film calls her “Burp Diaries,” complete with unexpectedly elaborate anatomical illustrations and observations about which foods, positions and techniques might give her an advantage. At one point, the pursuit begins to resemble sports science conducted by someone whose arena happens to be her own digestive tract.

That commitment is the film’s comic engine, but it is also the reason Eructation develops genuine affection for its protagonist. Kotkins’ willingness to claim an ability that most people would suppress at the dinner table gives the documentary a quiet theme beneath all the noise: If you possess a strange talent and it gives you joy, why should embarrassment decide whether it deserves pursuing?

Trow wisely makes the film’s visual language considerably more sophisticated than its bodily-function premise might suggest. Working with cinematographer and editor Max Henderson, she surrounds Kotkins with carefully arranged close-ups, overhead compositions and richly textured interiors. Much of the documentary was filmed inside Kotkins’ Portland apartment, where wood tones, deep reds and the saturated greens of the Pacific Northwest contribute to an unexpectedly handsome visual palette. Henderson and Trow even employed a large Sony camera dating from the 1990s to help establish the film’s particular texture.

The juxtaposition is delicious: a subject associated with the lowest form of table manners photographed with something approaching fashion-editorial reverence.

Sound, naturally, becomes the movie’s most important supporting character. Rather than simply tell us that 107.3 decibels is loud, Eructation constructs a vocabulary of everyday noises — hair dryers, vacuums, alarms, leaf blowers and other household assaults on the ears — that allow the audience to understand the scale of Kotkins’ challenge. It is a smart structural device because it simultaneously delivers information, builds anticipation and keeps withholding the sound everyone has come to hear. Trow has said that her original conception involved delaying the actual burp until the film’s conclusion, turning a bodily function into something resembling a suspense-film payoff.

Eric Stalker, Kotkins’ partner, offers the necessary counterweight. His proximity to this unusual athletic enterprise means he experiences something the audience only has to endure for six minutes: training. His reactions give Eructation another strand of comedy, suggesting that behind every determined record seeker may be a loved one quietly wondering how many practice attempts remain before bedtime.

If the film has a limitation, it is the same economy that makes it so pleasurable. Six minutes is enough time to understand Kotkins’ goal but not quite enough to know much of Kotkins beyond it. The documentary occasionally feels so immaculately constructed — and so rhythmically committed to reaching its punchline — that one wishes Trow would allow another minute or two of messiness into the frame. Who is this woman when she isn’t preparing to assault a decibel meter? What does pursuing something this ridiculous reveal about the less ridiculous parts of her life?

Yet expanding Eructation might also destroy its peculiar magic. The film knows exactly what it is, gets in, makes its case and gets out before the premise can exhaust itself. Henderson’s editing maintains a lively tempo, while the diagrams, sonic comparisons and domestic observations keep the information moving with almost comic-book efficiency.

And beneath the absurdity sits something unexpectedly generous. Eructation isn't really asking viewers to care about burping. It is asking them to care about enthusiasm — about that increasingly rare sight of a person embracing something without first wondering whether it looks impressive enough to strangers.

That may explain why the film connected beyond the obvious novelty of its premise. After its world premiere in the Documentary Short Competition at SXSW in March 2026, Eructation received the festival’s Special Jury Award for Documentary Short. The SXSW jury praised its playfulness, sonic curiosity and portrait of ambition applied to an obscure pursuit — an assessment that neatly captures Trow’s achievement.

With Eructation, Trow takes an act generally followed by an embarrassed “excuse me” and gives it lighting, cinematography, scientific diagrams and dramatic stakes. The result is funny without being condescending, polished without suffocating its subject and sincere without becoming sentimental.

Most importantly, Kotkins is never treated as the punchline.

The burp is.

And by the time it finally arrives, Eructation has somehow made you hope it is loud enough to make history.