The septet of juried offerings in the second track of the Sundance Short Film program reiterate the strength of this year’s slate in this cinematic format, particularly in the quality of acting across the board.
Seniors, directed by Adam Curley, shows promise as a comedic feature-length film. It is the morning of the day when Tom, a gay teen, and his parents are visiting Vassar College as he considers his future education. However, an awkwardly shocking morning start to the day that involves his parents soon reveals to Tom the signs that their marriage is on the verge of breaking.
Singaporean filmmaker Jen Nee Lim delivers a riveting bit in Fruit (Buah), as a woman desperately trying to terminate her pregnancy in a location where abortion is illegal fatefully meets an enigmatic bus driver. Tysha Khan, who plays the woman, won honors for best performance in a southeast Asian short film last year at the Singapore Film Festival. The short also will screen in March at SXSW.
Directed by Leah Vlemmiks, Agnes features excellent performances by Eileen Davies as the titular character and Clare Holman as Lynne. At 74, Agnes relishes every opportunity to experience life without the constraints of raising a family. While her adult daughter is hoping that her mother will accept the invitation to become a live-in babysitter, Agnes is learning a new language and engaging in Pilates. She also is working up the nerve to satisfy her curiosity with a nearby dance club and its background sounds of bass beats and youthful energy. In her seventies, Agnes is finding new joy and Vlemmiks’ film which is inspired by her own mother is a refreshing portrait of how two older women contemplate overriding the stereotypical limitations associated with their generational peers.
Equally compelling for its character performances, Gender Studies by Jamie Kiernan O’Brien is about a trans college student in a lit class who learns the woman she idolizes is sleeping with their teaching assistant and then decides to see if she can entice him into sex. This short is also on the forthcoming SXSW slate.
Incidentally, O’Brien is credited as the production sound mixer for another Sundance short film, Crisis Actor, directed by Lily Platt, who is a fellow New York University film student. Crisis Actor (see a forthcoming review and interview with Platt in The Utah Review ) won the Sundance Short Film Jury Award for U.S. Fiction.
In an interview for New York Women in Film & Television about how the premise for Gender Studies was developed, O’Brien said she was “always interested in a naive girl who finds gender affirmation through a bad sexual experience. Once I added the character of Rachel, it became much more about envy and wanting what other women have.” Inspired by erotic thrillers, O’Brien explained, “I was also thinking about the movies Maisie has probably loved. She’s learned about sex and relationships through her observations of other people and films, so what movie does she think she’s in before actually being confronted with the awkwardness of sex? The whole time on set, I said ‘she thinks she’s in The Piano Teacher or Basic Instinct,’ hence the imposing tone in the first half.”
Blue Heart, which has already won honors at several international film festivals, by Samuel Suffren, completes a trilogy of short films. This is the second of that series to screen at Sundance (Dreams Like Paper Boats, 2024). The story in this latest short revolves around Marianne and Pétion, who live in Haiti, and have been waiting for a call from their son who is in the U.S. in hopes of realizing the dream of living in America. Suffren deserves closer attention, especially as he has embarked on his first feature documentary, Lòtbò, and is developing a feature fiction film, Je m’appelle Nina Shakira.
Together Forever by Gregory Barnes is even more impressive than The Touch of The Master’s Hand, another of his short films that premiered in 2021 at Sundance. In this latest narrative short, Sydney (Lindsey Normington) and Caleb (Samuel Sylvester), both Mormons and best friends, are celebrating their wedding day and when it comes to consummating their marriage on their honeymoon night, Caleb’s dilemma is tense, especially as he wrestles with his actual sexual identity. He tries to reconcile his actual feelings and needs for intimacy from someone entirely different than Sydney with the challenge of keeping the commitment of their vows which have sealed them to be together forever.
Barnes is a queer filmmaker and Brigham Young University graduate who completed his master’s degree at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts. In The Touch of The Master’s Hand, the main character was Elder Hyde, who was serving his Mormon mission in Mexico. He struggled with deciding whether or not he can overcome his shame and confess his addiction to pornography during his worthiness interview with the mission president. The object of his addiction rightly caps the impact of the absurd humor.
In both of these shorts, Barnes, who was raised in a Mormon family in Illinois, has drawn from his experiences in Mormonism. He served a mission in northern Argentina. His family has long roots in Mormonism, going back to his great-great-great-great grandmother in New York who met Joseph Smith in 1834. In both instances, he sets the films and their respective dialogue that resonates familiarly with Mormons while not burdening it with insider material that otherwise would prevent non-Mormons from enjoying the characters and their narrative experience. Sylvester is a doctoral student in Italian studies and is not an actor by training, but his performances as the main character in both of these short films are astute and memorable. Currently a doctoral student at The University of Texas at Austin, Sylvester is a Vassar College alumnus, queer, Jewish and a polyglot.
In this latest short, Barnes expands explicitly on the bittersweet if not tragic implications of two individuals raised in a faith where it can be enormously difficult to escape the awkward dishonest dynamics of admitting to each other what really motivates them in intimate companionship and relationships of love. Barnes excels at understated elegance and utmost sensitivity for both characters, which clarifies the heart of the couple’s emotional and psychological trepidations without allowing them to be melodramatically expressed.
Capping a program propelled by solid acting across all seven shorts, Los Mentirosos (The Liars), directed by Eduardo Braun Costa, put the crowning touch on this offering, which earned a Sundance Short film Special Jury Award for Acting, highlighting the performances of Noah Roja and Filippo Carrozza as the two boys. Set in Buenos Aires, this delightful comedy follows the misadventures of Matias and Jaime, whose mother has had it with their antics at home and has given them money to go outside. The boys are hoping that they can get into the screening of the slapstick black comedy Me, Myself and Irene (2000), which is rated for mature audiences.
They succeed by convincing a young woman to purchase the tickets on their behalf but their troubles really start when the youngest boy (Jaime) is nabbed by a security guard because he stole some candy. Meanwhile, Matias is searching for an adult who can pretend that he is their father so that Jaime can be released into their custody. It doesn’t end well for the man, but the boys are quick on their feet and adept at escaping the chaos that ensues. The young actors are natural, making it easy for viewers to believe credibly that they could be brothers who have made their pact in such adventures.