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    Donald Glover's New Short Film Is Funny, Bizarre, And Kind Of Unsettling

    It's called Clapping For The Wrong Reasons and features appearances by Chance the Rapper, Trinidad Jame$, Flying Lotus, and Danielle Fishel (yes, Topanga). Seems like the ol' Childish Gambino has been busier than we all thought.

    Donald Glover executive produced, wrote, and starred in the short, which depicts him and his friends making music, swimming, picking lemons from a garden, and generally idling in a mansion in the Pacific Palisades.

    View this video on YouTube

    Via youtube.com

    Well, well, Donald...so this is what you've been up to all this time.

    Two weeks ago, the actor and rapper mysteriously tweeted out a teaser trailer for something called "Clapping For The Wrong Reasons."

    director's cut next week: http://t.co/VzdMEkrCQv

    Childish Gambino

    @DonaldGlover

    director's cut next week: http://t.co/VzdMEkrCQv

    / Via

    He provided very little information:

    Childish Gambino

    @DonaldGlover

    this was shot on film btw

    / Via

    It confused a lot of people, and led others to wildly try and analyze it. Why is Danielle Fishel aka Topanga in the same video as Chance the Rapper and Trinidad Jame$ and producer Flying Lotus? Porn star Abella Anderson also appears in the film, which confuses matters even further.

    Like the trailer, the film itself is largely characterized by its strangely melancholy atmosphere. It's also kind of unsettling, and at times even cringeworthy — just check the 17-minute, 6-second mark.

    While Glover wrote the film (though some of the dialogue feels so natural, it feels like much of it could've been improv), it's directed by Hiro Murai, who's mostly known for his work in music videos. He most recently directed Earl Sweatshirt's video for "Hive," which is similarly dark and contemplative. (Fun fact: He also directed Usher's "DJ's Got Us Fallin' In Love Again.")

    Glover will be getting his own half-hour comedy series on FX called Atlanta, which will center around the music scene of the city, Deadline reports. He'll be starring, writing, and executive producing the show, thanks to his light load on next season's Community.

    The actor has been noticeably MIA this past year, basically disappearing from social media until just last month, when he returned to Twitter and dropped a (really good!) new track called "Centipede." And then news broke last month that Glover would only be returning for five of the Community forthcoming 13 episodes, but the speculation was that it was in large part because of his increasing focus on his rap career as Childish Gambino.

    But with the news of his FX show and this short film, it looks like he'll be doing plenty of acting... but now the projects will be all his own.