Ten of Swords (15:17)
IMDb; Touch Piece Productions; YouTube

This 2023 short film was presented by Alter in 2024.

A man named Jay wakes up and finds himself dead- sort of. He's actually a zombie, now. He gets taken by zombie wranglers to a facility where zombies are trained to perform menial tasks, so that they can be used as free labor. Apparently, people sell their bodies before they die, with the promise that they'll be mindless and won't mind the work. Unfortunately for Jay and the other zombies he's now working with, they still have their minds and personalities, but their speech can only be understood by other zombies; and the zombies themselves can no longer understand human speech. (Another problem with selling your body is that you can then be murdered and sold into servitude early, and obviously have no recourse.) Jay wants to get free and talk to someone, and there is another zombie who may be able to help with that... but who has no intention of helping anyone but himself.

That's all I want to say about the plot. The ending is rather ambiguous, I would say, but overall it's not a bad story. And the concepts are far more interesting than the story itself. It's one of those short films that would probably be better as a longer film with a more developed story and more satisfying ending, but I still found every minute of the film worth watching and intriguing. Definitely an interesting take on the zombie genre.