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Slamdance Film Festival

Reporting from Slamdance – The Winners Are…

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Now that the 2021 version of the Slamdance Film Festival is over, it is time to look back at some of the best films that played at the festival. The festival included 25 feature films and 107 shorts. Of course, the festival this year was almost completely virtual (the opening night and closing night films played at drive-ins), but the festival provided excellent Q&As with filmmakers to go along with the screenings. My thanks for the organizers and sponsors, and especially the filmmakers, for the wonderful experience of this year’s Slamdance.

Slamdance has several juries that gave out awards. There are also audience awards based on ratings made after viewing the films. And I’ll include my on top films as well. This year’s winners:

Jury Awards | Narrative Features

  • Narrative Feature Grand Jury Prize: Taipei Suicide Story directed by KEFF (Taiwan)
  •  Honorable Mention: ​A Family directed by Jayden Stevens (Australia)

Jury Awards | Documentary Features

  • Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize: CODE NAME: Nagasaki directed by Fredrik S. Hana (Austria)

Jury Awards | Breakout Features

  • Breakout Grand Jury Prize: No Trace directed by Simon Lavoie (Canada)
  • Honorable Mention: A Black Rift Begins to Yawn directed by Matthew Wade (USA)
     

Jury Awards | Documentary Shorts

  • Documentary Short Grand Jury Prize: Unforgivable directed by Marlén Viñayo (El Salvador)
  •  Honorable Mention: ​Ain’t No Time for Women directed by Sarra El Abed (Canada)
     

Jury Awards | Unstoppable Shorts presented by Hulu

  • Unstoppable Grand Jury Prize: The Bin directed by Jocelyn Tamayao (Philippines)
  • Honorable Mention: Feeling Through directed by Doug Roland (USA)
  • Honorable Mention: Full Picture directed by Jacob Reed (USA)
     

Jury Awards – Narrative Shorts

  • Narrative Shorts Grand Jury Prize: ​In France Michelle is a Man’s Name directed by Em Weinstein (USA)
  • Honorable Mention: ​MADA (Mother) directed by Joseph Douglas Elmhirst (USA)
  • Honorable Mention: Delimitation directed by Tereza Vejvodova (Czech Republic)
     

Jury Awards – Experimental Shorts

  • Grand Jury Prize: ​Passage directed by Ann Oren (Germany)
  • Honorable Mention: Mountain Lodge directed by Jordan Wong (USA)
     

Jury Awards – Animated Shorts

  • Grand Jury Prize: ​Return to the Peach Blossom Wonderland directed by Haomin Peng, Yue Huang, Yuchao Luo (China)
  •  Honorable Mention: ​Lizard Ladder directed by Ted Wiggin (USA)

Slamdance Acting Award

  • Tender Huang​ from the film Taipei Suicide Story​ (Taiwan)
  • Honorable mention: ​Michelle Uranowitz of the film The Ultimate (by Lou Fescano)(USA)

Audience Awards Winners:

  •  Best Narrative Feature: Taipei Suicide Story directed by KEFF (Taiwan)
  •  Documentary Feature: Holy Frit directed by Justin Monroe (USA)
  •  Episodic: The Little Broomstick Rider directed by Matteo Bernardini (Italy)

The AGBO Fellowship Award Winner, presented by Joe and Anthony Russo

  • Agnieszka Polska, director of Hurrah, We Are Still Alive! (Poland)

Slamdance Founder Award Winner

  • Award Winner: Tilane Jones, President of ARRAY (USA)

George Starks Spirit of Slamdance Award Winner

  • Award Winner: Chelsea Christer, director of Bleeding Audio (USA)
  •  Honorable Mention: Mohammad Mohammadian, director of LIFE (Iran) 

Creative Future Innovation Award Winner

  •  Opera by Erick Oh

My own favorites were Holy Frit, directed by Justin Monroe; Opera, directed by Erick Oh; Taipei Suicide Story, directed by KEFF; Feeling Through, directed by Doug Roland; and 18th & Grand: The Olympic Auditorium Story, directed by Stephen DeBro.

Reporting from Slamdance – “Unstoppable” filmmakers (part 2)

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Diversity is being recognized as an important goal in the film industry. Many voices and many perspectives are needed in every art form, and that is very true of film. This year’s Slamdance Film Festival has made an express effort to bring the idea of ablism and the perspective of people with disabilities (PWD). There is a special section of shorts called “Unstoppable” that focuses on films by or about peoples with disabilities. It has a wide range of styles, tones, and content. There are documentaries, music videos, and narrative films. There are 22 films in the section, so I’ve divided my comments into two reports. This is the second report. The earlier report can be seen here. The Unstoppable section is presented by Hulu.

On the Outs. (37 minutes, directed by Jordan Melograna). This documentary follows three inmates with disabilities as they prepare for their release and reenter the world. One has mental illness, one has brain damage and has had hip replacement, one has visual impairment. Their disabilities certainly complicate the process, but even more that film shows the way the system falls far short of preparing even those without disabilities for a time after their sentence.

Safety Net. (12 minutes, directed by Anthea Williams.) A thirteen year old boy living with a disability has just entered emergency care after his mother was arrested. He is staying in a seedy motel with a guardian present. The first guardian is compassionate and encouraging. The relief guardian is stern and demanding. The boy’s future may well depend on this care and which guardian will dominate his time.

Single. (16 minutes, directed by Ashley Eakin). A young woman born with one arm faces the world with an attitude. She doesn’t want to be pitied or thought of as disabled. She responds to most people with anger when they note her missing arm. She’s been set up on a blind date, and discovers that her date only has one hand. She is irate at the person who set them up. Her date convinces hre to come to his rooftop and throw eggs at the wall to take out her anger at all those who have slighted her. A good therapy session for her.

Stilts. (7 minutes, directed by Dylan Holmes Williams) A young man who, like the rest of his family, lives with very large stilts attached to his legs. Because he’s so tall, he can’t get through an exit to the outside world. He seeks surgery to remove the stilts and be set free.

The Bin. (15 minute, directed by Jocelyn Tamayao). A father and his hearing impaired son are at odds over getting cochlear implants versus using sign language. The father wants to make his son “normal”; the son wants to live his own kind of normal.

The Co-op. (7 minutes, directed by Cameron S. Mitchell). A thief attempts to hold up a market late at night, but his plans hit a snag when the store is filled with PWD.

Union. (19 minutes, directed by Julia Neill). During the Civil War a woman returns home for Christmas, she brings with her a Union soldier to meet her family. They met when she, a surgeon, amputated his arm. Now they come for her father’s blessing. But how does he know the man will be able to take care of her? Perhaps it is his own insecurities that cause him to hesitate.

Unspoken. (27 minutes, directed by Emma Zurcher-Long, Julia Ngeow, and Geneva Peschka). Emma Zurcher-Long is a fourteen year old girl with autism. After years of not being able to communicate, it was discovered she could write using a keyboard. She shares information about her world and how it differs from ours. She breaks down the stereotypes and prejudices that surround her.

Verisimilitude.  (14 minutes, directed by David Proud). An actress who can’t get roles because she is in a wheelchair is hired for a movie to teach an abled actor how to act disabled. There are also several abled extras in wheelchairs. This film serves as a bit of judgment on an industry that often fails to see beyond a first appearance.

Road to Zion. (16 Minutes, directed by Andrew Reid). A undocumented Jamaican young man and his family (which includes a brother with a intellectual disability) struggle to make ends meet. Without a green card it is hard to get the kind of job that will bring the money his family needs. A local drug dealer makes it know he can work for him. What will he do to take care of his family?

A truly appreciate Slamdance and Hulu for making this special section possible. Of course, not everything suited my taste, but the voice that comes through from many of these shorts is important. It also shows how valuable it is to have diversity in filmmaking.

My top favorite from the section is Feeling Through. Others that I deeply appreciate are How Much Am I Worth?, On the Outs, and Unspoken.

Reporting from Slamdance – a Sampling of Narrative Shorts

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Narrative shorts are films that are storytelling stripped down to the essentials. You don’t have time in shorts to develop side plots or bring in very many characters. You just put the story out there to be enjoyed or thought about. As I’ve had time, I’ve looked at a few of the narrative shorts that are part of the Slamdance Film Festival this year. Here are a few of my thoughts.

Autoscopy. (14 minutes, directed by Claes Nordwall). A young man goes into the woods with sound equipment capturing the sounds of nature. Along the way he finds an abandoned floatation chamber that leads him to a trippy chance to look at himself.

Blue. (15 minutes, directed by Ali Şenses). A man walks through the city carrying a paint bucket and a long-handled brush. As he walks the handle of the brush hits everything, making noises. Until he hits a particular piece of fence that makes the sound he’s been searching for.

Each Other. (6 minutes, directed by Oskar Weimar). This is more dance that story. A very limber naked man emerges from a tree and seeks to understand what his place in the world is. Cow? Chicken? Something else?

Trammel. (11 minutes, directed by Christopher Bell). A solitary man comes in to the local pharmacy to talk to his friend behind the counter. He tells his stories. We may or may not believe him. The key question I asked myself during this film is what assumptions I made about the man based on his appearance and his stories.

Inside the Storm. (14 minutes, directed by Daniel Bloom). A man who has had a break up goes to visit a friend he hasn’t seen in a long time. The man isn’t in a healthy place. I found it a bit hard to watch for the ways he seemed to be degrading himself.

Returning. (14 minutes, directed by Lucy Bridger). A retired teacher, whose husband is away for a few days, deals with a man helping her with her garden. It’s interesting how much we learn about the married couple and the desires and frustrations the woman experiences.

 Mada (Mother). (20 minutes, directed by Joseph Douglas Elmhirst). A young woman in rural Jamaica has conflict with her devout mother over allowing her son to play with a doll. The grandmother wants them to go to church so they don’t fall into the wrong paths. But we see both women are seeking what is best for the boy, even if they have very different ideas of what that is.

Young Forever. (15 minutes, directed by Stevie Szerlip). A Korean woman in Los Angeles, struggles with a pyramid cosmetic sales program, gambling, debt, and loss. Her sales pitch is about getting away from stress, but her life is filled with it.

There. (29 minutes, directed by Wu Yu Fen). An Indonesian caregiver mourns “Grandpa”, whom she has been taking care of. She is now planning to return to Indonesia to care for her ailing mother. But with Grandpa’s children all working abroad, there are few people around to mourn Grandpa at his funeral. The key contrast is seen in the care the woman has for the deceased in her prayer by herself as opposed to the prayer cried by the professional mourner.

Reporting from Slamdance – Narrative Features (Part 1)

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I want to use this report to touch on a few of the films that are part of the Narrative Feature section at the Slamdance Film Festival. I’ve got to admit that as I’ve been focusing on shorts for a bit, it took a bit of a mental shift to wait for a story to develop. But watching films is sort of like riding a bike, it comes back to you quickly.

A film with a somewhat off-putting title was far more engaging than I expected. Taipei Suicide Story, directed by KEFF, takes place in a specialty hotel—it caters to people who want to die. The desk clerk is informed by one of the cleaning crew that there is a guest in one of the rooms who has been there a week and still alive. When he goes up and finds a young woman who explains that when she arrived, she knew that everyone there was like her, so she no longer felt alone. She no longer needed to die, but she also didn’t want to live. He tells here she has one last night to either die or leave. As the night progresses, the two spend some time together talking—connecting. Will this be the push she needs to end it all or to choose life? How will her decision affect the clerk?

While the film is very brief for a feature (48 minutes), it pulls us into the strange world of the hotel. The daily cleaning service is obviously much different than the hotels we visit. There are some bits of very dark humor that just show up as seemingly throwaway lines. (She’s contemplating buying some instant noodles, and he suggests there are healthier options.) But mostly we are drawn to these two people who are meeting on what may be the last day they will be together. I was a little surprised how much I liked this.

In A Brixton Tale matters of race and class complicate a relationship between two young people. Leah, a young vlogger from a well-to-do family connects with Benji, a shy black young man from the Barrier Block. and uses Benji as the subject of a videoed documentary on Brixton. They become close and are falling in love. But when Benji sees the way she’s edited his life, he feels (rightfully so) that he’s been used. When someone posts a sex video of Leah online, she and Benji seek revenge, and the violence ends up greater than they had planned, but given their social disparity we know that Benji will pay the price.

There are levels here. The film is a minor indictment of voyeuristic filmmaking that wants to show a gritty side of life that the filmmakers are not part of. When we see Leah’s film exhibited to a very upscale crowd, we know that they care more about the quality of the film that the quality of life that Benji lives. It also points out the discrepancy of hope for the two characters, especially when legal troubles come. A Brixton Tale is making its world premiere at Slamdance.

The Polish film Hurrah, We Are Still Alive, directed by Agnieszka Polska, is a noirish story of a group of “socially engaged” filmmakers who are in a holding pattern as they await the return of “the director”. Even in his absence, he seems to have some effect on what is going on in their lives. In part this is because he has taken some of the money left with the group by the Movement (a revolutionary organization) to “invest” to finance his movie about Rosa Luxemburg.  When a woman from the Movement shows up wanting the money, she reconnects with one of the actresses. Some cowboy police officers are also threatening the group. But we also know that an enforcer is being called in—from two different directions.

There is a certain Waiting for Godot vibe to this plot, but without bowler hats or the existential reflection. But there is a sense that all these people are lost and floundering in the director’s absence. It has places where it gets a bit to artsy (especially a few interludes with a rose and blood in the early part of the film that don’t seem to fit with anything). But the noirish feel is well done.

Photos courtesy of Slamdance Film Festival.

Reporting from Slamdance – I’ll admit there’s some weird stuff here.

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Festivals often have films that are outside my normal comfort zone. I may just skip over those sections with experimental styles of filmmaking. Slamdance has some groups of films that fit this category, including sections of Experimental Shorts, DIG (Digital, Interactive, and Gaming), and The Department of Anarchy. I decided to dip my toe into these sections to look for a few that might interest me.

“The Department of Anarchy”

Life. (4 seconds directed by Mohammad Mohammadian). Yes, that’s right, a four second film. How much depth can there be in that short a period? Well, you’re spending more time reading this review than the length of the film. Obviously, the theme is the brevity of life. And it makes that point clearly.

Bare Bones.  (10 minutes, directed by Meryem Lahlou). This is a computer animated film with voice over that reflects on the pendulum of life and death. It  creates a surreal world that leads us to nihilistic existential contemplation.

ASMR for White Liberals.(3 minutes, directed by John Connor Hammond). A black man softly says the kinds of things that will calm white liberals. As a white liberal myself, I understand that these are thing I think I would want to hear, but there is moral judgement to be found in that.

 Everything You Need to Know about Pierogi. (4 minutes, directed by John Phillips). What starts off as a rather boring celebration of the Polish dumpling suddenly takes a very strange turn into fulfilling life’s purpose.

Peter the Penguin. (10 minutes, directed by Andrew Rutter). Nigel is about to meet his girlfriend’s daughter for the first time. The stuffed toy he’s brought really isn’t good enough. When they get to the house, the child is in a panic because her stuffed penguin has been hurt. The ensuing drama takes a very dark turn for Nigel.

“DIG: Digital, Interactive & Gaming”

The Long Fall. (4 minutes, directed by Cade Mirabitur). Computer animation using a gaming engine. The interior of a house, with manikin-esque people. The house falls and tumbles into a bottomless pit.

24,483 Dreams of Death. (15 minutes, directed by Chris Peters). This project uses two separate Artificial Intelligences. The first AI watched a movie several times and then creates the visual world it perceives. Over this visual are the words of another AI that had been trained with millions of lines of poetry that creates its idea of poetry. The result is an eerie visual poetry.

To Die in the Valley I Love. (12 minutes, directed by Koryn Wicks). This film calls itself “a movement meditation on horror movies”. With a computer-generated text about horror films, a dancer responds to the text.

“Experimental Shorts”

Morning Sickness in the USA. (3 minutes, directed by Christine Brache). The filmmaker shares her grandmother’s story of coming to the US from Puerto Rico and being placed in a mental hospital when she went to a doctor for inexplicable nausea. The assumptions based on ethnicity point to problems in the system.

Rumi and His Roses (6 minutes, directed by Navid Sinaki). A gay Iranian man tells the story of the smuggling of love poems in bootleg DVD menus in his first relationship.

The Gospel According to Them. (11 minutes, directed by Bury Leod). A collection of various clips focusing of faith, but also black British experience. The clips are all in small inserts on the screen which created a distance that, for me, was off-putting.

Photos courtesy of Slamdance Film Festival

Reporting from Slamdance – Documentary Shorts

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As with most festivals, Slamdance offers a chance to see short films. Shorts give filmmakers a chance to work on their craft with much lower budgets, but shorts can also be an artform or storytelling technique in their own right. That is especially true of documentary shorts that can bring informative and thought-provoking stories that could easily be overlooked. Here are the documentary shorts at Slamdance.

A Family that Steals Dogs (8 minutes, directed by John C. Kelley). This is animated in a somewhat experimental blend of visuals and speaking. It serves as a meditation on loss, family, and mental illness.

About a Home (10 minutes, directed by Daniel Chien and Elizabeth Lo). The Sarria Family documents their life in housing insecurity. It reflects the life of many who live a difficult life in a very well to do area.

Ain’t No Time for Women (20 minutes, directed by Sarra El Abed). This Canadian film takes place in a Tunis hair salon. The women who come in talk about the importance of women to the Arab Spring, but as they look to upcoming elections, they fret about losing the gain in women’s rights to more conservative parties.

Faraway (18 minutes, directed by Aziz Zoromba). Scenes covering four seasons as an Arab man living in Canada who is estranged from him family because of his homosexuality tries to reconnect with his mother.

Field Resistance (16 minutes, directed by Emile Drummer). Another that has an experimental feel to it. No real narrative, but we see agricultural related bits of Iowa joined with more dystopian scenes and comments.

I Think It’s Enough, Isn’t It? (5 minutes, directed by Emily Shir Seagal). As we see videos of father and daughter, a young Israeli woman reflects on the death of her father from COVID when she could not visit him or see the body after his death.The film conveys a small bit of the heartbreak that so many families around the world have encountered in the last year.

Miss Curvy (25 minutes, directed by Ghada Eldemellawy). We watch a 34 year old mother and teacher in a Ugandan beauty pageant for plus-sized women. As she goes through the bootcamp and pageant she deals with the trauma of her marriage and finds value in who she is.

Sleeping with the Devil (24 minutes, directed by Alisa Yang). When the filmmaker told her mother she no longer believed in God, her mother began taking her to faith-healers and exorcists. This film is a Skype exorcism session with an evangelical pastor, Bob Larson. There is no commentary to go along with it. For me, the spiritual (and fihnancial) abuse here is truly cringe worthy.

The Length of Day (18 minutes, directed by Laura Conway). The filmmaker uses archival footage to try to connect with her grandparents who were Communists, and the struggle to bring revolution.

Unforgivable (36 minutes, directed by Marlén Viñayo). A look inside a Salvadoran prison that is essentially run by evangelical churches. Geovany is serving his time in a special locked unit. Not because of his past as an assassin for a street gang, but because he is gay—something that is not accepted by either the gang or the church.

My favorites of the section are Ain’t No Time for Women, I Think It’s Enough, Isn’t It? and Miss Curvy.

Welcome to the 2021 Slamdance Film Festival

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Like festivals all around the world over this last year, Slamdance Film Festival is going digital. Over 100 films will be available to watch from February 12-25. Slamdance, as the name implies, skews a bit to the edgier side of independent films. But that doesn’t mean it’s all weird, all the time. There are some very interesting films that will be part of the online festival.

Naturally there are feature films, both narrative and documentary, with a wide range of subject matter. There is also a load of short films. These include the traditional shorts sections of live action narrative, animated, and documentary shorts. But Slamdance also always has some sections that are a bit more out there. This year, that includes, “The Department of Anarchy”, “Experimental Shorts” and “DIG: Digital, Interactive, and Gaming”. Slamdance is also featuring a special section of shorts called “Unstoppable” that deals with people with disabilities. There will also be panel discussions about filmmaking and the business along the way.

I plan on reporting on many of the features, some in single film review, some in small groups of films, throughout the week. I’ll also be spending some time with the shorts and bringing reports on many of them.

Because this is a virtual festival, it means that you, too, can be part of the festival. Festival passes are available at the festival website for an amazingly low price of $10. That gets you access to the wide range of films without standing in line or filling a crowded screening room. (Even though many of us are yearning to return to theaters for films, we can’t just yet.)

Slamdance 2020: Day 3

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More from Slamdance, the film festival “By Filmmakers, For Filmmakers” currently taking place in Park City, Utah, down the street from the more well known Sundance Film Festival.

On September 11, 2015, Iraq War vet Jon Hancock, set out from his home in Maryland to walk to Camp Pendleton in California. But it was not going to be a straight route. He wanted to stop along the way to visit with some of the Marines he served with, and with some of the gold star families of his fallen comrades. Bastard’s Road is a brief overview of that fifteen month journey. For Hancock this is an important mission—both for himself and for his “brothers” and their families. All have issues growing out of their war time experiences. All have issues with PTSD (which is talked about) and some with moral injury (which is not mentioned). It is about the bonds that these men forged in battle. And it is about the pain they brought home. It is about finding ways to process the things they have seen and done. It is also, for Hancock, about forgiving himself for some of the things he has done in his life.

In Shoot to Marry, filmmaker Steve Markle is 42 years old and unmarried. As he puts it, “I should be divorced by now.” After a breakup with a longtime girlfriend (and for a day, fiancée), he’s trying to find someone to marry. He decides he’ll start finding interesting women (in various ways) and asking them to be in a documentary he’s making. He interviewed fifty women (including his 3rd grade crush, a pilot, a firefighter, a dominatrix, a sex club owner, a hat designer, and more) asking them about what they might want, and what he should be doing. Yes, there are some ethical issues with this, and he ponders them. But he also manages to bring to the screen a number of women with interesting lives and perspectives. He also manages to learn a bit about himself. But will he find his soulmate?

Slamdance 2020: Day 2

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More from Slamdance, the film festival “By Filmmakers, For Filmmakers” currently taking place in Park City, Utah, down the street from the more well known Sundance Film Festival.

Is Falun Gong a peaceful religion or a dangerous cult? The Chinese government would like us to believe the latter. Ask No Questions, from Jason Loftus and Eric Pedicelli, is a documentary that looks at a 2001 event of self-immolation by Falun Gong members in Tiananmen Square. The Chinese government used that event to crack down the group, and to show the world that they were not persecuting religion, but stopping a dangerous cult. However, Jason Loftus, himself a Falun Gong practitioner who has protested Chinese oppression of the group, has made this film to question what really happened that day. The result is a believable conspiracy theory that it was staged by the government. The film includes interviews with a CNN journalist who was there that day; a Chinese TV producer who was arrested for being involved in Falun Gong, sent to reeducation facilities and labor camp; and others who question what happened and how well it played into the government’s agenda. Now, years after the event, some are again questioning China’s opposition to the group. But perhaps the damage has already been done.

Tahara, directed by Olivia Peace, is a story to teen angst. Following the suicide of a Hebrew school classmate, a group of teens are at synagogue to talk about it. They are all rather out of their depth, but especially Hannah, who is shallow and self-absorbed. Her main focus is her lust for Tristan. Hannah’s best friend, Carrie, is quiet and uncomfortable. But when in the women’s lounge Hannah wants to know if she’s a good kisser, the two girls share a kiss. It means far more to Carrie than it does to Hannah. In and out of the group grief session, the two girls struggle with real and imagined feelings that may tear them apart.

Ennui seems to be the driving force for the characters in Tapeworm. Set in Winnipeg, it follows a group of loosely connected people as they suffer through their meaningless lives. There is a hypochondriac, a pathetic stand up comedian, a video game player who lives with his mother, a pair of stoners. None of them are at all interesting or call to us to empathize. Promotional comments about the film refer to it as a “cringe comedy” or an “anti-comedy”. You might think that this is an opportunity for an exploration of pathos. Nope.

Slamdance 2020: Day 1

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Welcome to Slamdance. While most of the world is familiar with the Sundance Film Festival, they may not have heard of Slamdance, a renegade festival also held in Park City, Utah, the same week. Slamdance’s mantra is “By Filmmakers, For Filmmakers”. The Slamdance Festival seeks to highlight “raw and innovative filmmaking.” Among filmmakers who showed films at Slamdance early in their careers are Bong Joon Ho (director of Oscar-nominated Parasite), Rian Johnson (director of Knives Out and Star Wars: The Last Jedi), Jon M. Chu (director of Crazy Rich Asians), and Christopher Nolan (director of Dunkirk). Will this year’s filmmakers be those we are watching in years to come?

Murmur, from writer/director Heather Young, is a story of emptiness. Donna, an middle-aged woman, is alone. She is doing community service after a DUI at an animal shelter. Her life is drinking, vaping, and trying to connect with her estranged daughter who ignores her pleas. One day at the shelter, she connects with Charlie, a dog who is scheduled to be euthanized because of health issues. She believes he deserves a better life and convinces the staff to let her adopt Charlie. This gives her of bit a direction in her life. But is Charlie enough to give her a better life? Soon she adds a cat, another dog, a hamster, and more—many more animals. As we watch we may not be quite sure (for a while) if she is finding satisfaction, or just filling her life with more and more chaos in a search for any kind of love in her life. As it plays out, we discover that, like Charlie, Donna has a heart murmur. In this film that serves as a metaphor for her emptiness—it is like a hole in the heart that can be the cause of a murmur. As she tries to fill that hole in her life, she really is struggling against an internal darkness that has brought her to this point.

In Merawi Germina’s Residue, Jay, a young filmmaker, comes back to his childhood neighborhood in DC in search of a new movie. This is a “you can’t go home again” story. The neighborhood is in the process of gentrification. New white people are moving in, but many of the African American people he grew up with are still there. We see his memories of childhood—mostly happy, but at times showing the crime that was also present. Jay is brooding. He seems to harbor anger and sorrow, perhaps because of the racism he has experienced. As he interacts with the residents of the neighborhood, he tries to find his best friend from childhood, but no one seems to know what happened to him—or won’t say. Jay also discovers that those still in the neighborhood hold some resentment because Jay left—he’s no longer one of them. The film highlights the way racism impacted the community—through deaths and imprisonment—and Jay’s life, even though he has found a better life elsewhere.