MIAMI FILM FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE

By Luis Caminero

The Miami Film Festival had an interesting collection of four extremely different short films being played together for almost no apparent reason. The screening included: The Things They Left Behind, an American short film directed by Sara Werner; Mother, a Spanish short film directed by Rodrigo Sorogoyen; (Fool Time) Job, a French animated short film; and Unfinished, 2017 (Mixed media), an American short film directed by Rafael Salazar Moreno. The more I watched, the more I wondered: “why are these films together?”

It all started with Unfinished, 2017 (Mixed media), a film that captures the decisive and inevitable moment in which an artist faces her greatest fear: to stop making art. Elena (Isa Feliu), a struggling artist living in New York, is constantly being reminded of the harsh reality of an artist by her boyfriend, Alex (Alex Mallis), and her landlord. Rafael Salazar Moreno opted for keeping constant jump cuts in the film in order to sell the idea that reality is being distorted by Elena’s perception of the world and her imagination. In my opinion, this choice of editing made the film feel a bit jarring because it was never really justified until a moment of magical realism was introduced almost at the end of the film.

Job played right after, with the audience having to rapidly adjust from film to animation. The film follows Pedro, a family guy who just found a new job in the “Reserve”. The job is rather strange, but he will have to put up with it in order to support his family. This film is pure animation with no dialogue. The director managed to make the audience care about Pedro and sympathize with his struggle without him needing to say a word. The animation and sound
design was excellent, and the story is full of symbolism and statements that will keep you wondering for days.

We were then introduced to The Things They Left Behind, a film that follows Scott Staley (Tom Frank), a year after losing his girlfriend Sonia (Juliana Harkavy), his co-worker Cleve (Chaz Mena), and his boss Ken (Terrance Murphy). In the story, Scott is constantly being haunted by the memory of the people that he lost, accompanied by three objects, previously owned by the deceased, that appeared in his apartment. The story gets progressively more emotional as it progresses and more backstory is given in the memories of Scott, making it very easy to relate to. The film was very well produced with all the aspects perfectly blending together.

Finally, we were wonderfully surprised by Mother, a short film that follows Marta (Marta Nieto), a woman that is at home with her mother (Blanca Apilánez), gets a phone call from her six-year-old son (Álvaro Balas), who’s on holiday in France with his father. The father left the son by himself at the beach and Marta has to figure out how to find and protect her son. The story is full of tension and moments of raw emotions. The story was very simple, as well as almost everything else in the film, but the story and the acting performance is so good that it is almost impossible to not cry with the Marta as she tries to tell her son that everything is going to be fine, even though she is not sure of that herself. Mother is a film that will touch everyone’s heart as they watch it. It was definitely the film that taught me the most, as it was able to achieve so much with so little. It was a reminder that good storytelling is more important than anything else.